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■prcm  a  pbctcgrafb  cf  )VIr.  Cbadwich,  rradc  in  bis  study  in  tbe  fall  of 

1903,  by  )VIr.  Rctiry  f)ovt  )VIcorc.     Chis  is  perhaps 

the  last  pbotograpb  taken  of  bim. 


•       •       • 

•  .  • 


•    * 


».•       *. 


•  •  • 


SEEING    AND   BEING 


AND    OTHER   SERMONS 


BY 


JOHN   W.    CHADWICK 


AUTHOR    OF    "the    BIBLE   OF   TO-DAY,"    "  THE    FAITH    OF    REASON,"      'THE   MAN 
JESUS,"    "a    book    OF    POEMS,"    ETC.,    ETC. 


SB)  '    '    ,      '  ■> 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  SERIES 


BOSTON 

Geo.  H.  Ellis,  141  Franklin  Street 

1893 


-^1^^' 


o 


_         GIKTQ? 


^ 


T 


CONTENTS. 


SEVENTEENTH   SERIES. 

Page 

I.  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls i 

n.  "A  Mere  Man" ^3 

HI.    The    Constructive    Achievements    of    the    Higher 

Criticism -7 

IV.    Tempted  of  God -45 

V.    The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 57 

VI.     Orthodoxy:    What  is  it? 7i 

VII.     Morality  and  Religion    .     .  85 

VIII.    The  Conversion   of  Energy 99 


EIGHTEENTH  SERIES. 

I.    Two  Meanings  of   Religion i 

II.    The  Undiscovered  Country ^5 

III.  Samuel  Longfellow -9 

IV.  The  Old,  Old  Story 47 

V.    The  Fulness  of  Time 63 

VI.    The  Unbridled  Tongue 77 

VII.    Immortality 93 

VIII.    Seeing  and  Being m 


884198 


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, ,     >     >    '       ' 


' ,  • , '  J , , , .  )  '  J '  >  . '  > '  > 


GREAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS. 


When  the  French  revolutionist  Condorcet  was  outlawed 
by  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  because  he  dared  impeach  the 
murder  of   the  Girondins  as  a  crime  against  the  State,  he 
went  into  concealment  in  Paris,  and  with  the  uproar  of  the 
Terror  daily  ringing  in  his  ears,  his  life  in  constant  jeopardy, 
he  found  a  quiet  place  in  his  own   mind,  from  which  he  lis- 
tened with    an    imperturbable   serenity  to  the    mad    tumult 
raging  everywhere  about  him.     Under  such  circumstances,  he 
completed  his  great  work  upon  the  Progress  of  the  Human 
Mind,  concluding  it  with  these    memorable  words:    "Does 
not  -this  picture  of  the  human  race,  freed  from  all  its  fetters, 
withdrawn   from    the    empire  of   chance,   and   walking  with 
assured  step  in  the  path  of  truth  and  virtue  and  happiness, 
present  to  the  philosopher  a  sight  that  consoles  him  for  the 
errors,  the  crimes,  the  injustice,  with  which  the  earth  is  yet 
stained  and  of  which  he  is  not  seldom  a  victim  ?     It  is  in  the 
contemplation  of  this  picture  that  he  receives  the  reward  of 
his  efforts  for  the  progress  of  reason,  for  the  defence  of  lib- 
erty.    He  ventures  to  link  them  with  the  eternal  chain  of  the 
destinies  of  man  :  it  is  there  that  he  finds  the  true  recompense 
of  virtue, —  the  pleasure  of  having  done  a  lasting  good.     Fate 
can  no  longer  undo  it  by  any  disastrous  compensation  that 
shall  restore  prejudice  and  bondage.     This  contemplation  is 
for  him  a  refuge  into  which  the  recollection  of  his  persecutors 
can  never  follow  him  ;  in  which,  living  in  thought  with  man 
reinstated  in  the  rights  and  dignities  of  his  nature,  he  forgets 
man  tormented   and  corrupted  by  greed,  by  base  fear  and 
envy ;  it  is  here  that  he  truly  abides  with  his  fellows  in  an 


2  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls. 

elysium  that  his  reason  has  creaced  for  itself  and  that  his 
love  for  humanity  fills  with  the  purest  joy" 

There  is  nothing  j-.tr^nge,  unique,  phenomenal  in  that 
prophecy  and  vision  of  the  hunted  refugee  for  whom  "  Ma- 
dame Guillotine  "  was  sharpening  her  knife,  but  whose  death, 
then  close  at  hand,  was  not  to  stain  her  catalogue  of  miscon- 
ception and  ingratitude  and  crime.  In  that  prophecy  and 
vision  we  have  a  single  illustration  of  a  universal  law,  v/hich 
is  "  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls."  *  Wherever  there  is  a 
great  soul,  it  triumphs  over  the  misery  and  terror  of  the  im- 
mediate present.  In  spite  of  seeming  failure,  or,  it  may  be, 
of  cruel  death  impending,  the  future  large  and  glorious  looms 
upon  its  sight.  There  is  no  unreality  in  that  closing  scene 
in  Victor  Hugo's  "  Ninety-Three,"  where  till  the  morning 
breaks  the  prisoner  Gauvain,  and  Cimourdain  who  has  de- 
creed his  death  and  is  to  be  his  executioner,  forget  their  mu- 
tual relations  and  the  approaching  fatal  hour  as  they  seek  to 
draw  aside  the  curtain  that  conceals  from  them  the  g}orious 
future  of  mankind.  The  conquered,  the  condemned,  becomes 
the  teacher  and  inspirer  in  that  solemn  and  transcendent 
hour.  It  is  the  great  soul  that  makes  the  great  hope, —  makes 
it  so  great  that  it  dwarfs  the  huge,  dark  failure  of  the  present 
into  an  insignificance  so  absolute  that  it  is  as  if  it  did  not 
exist.  "  Be  of  good  cheer,  Brother  Ridley,"  cried  Latimer 
from  out  the  flames ;  "  for  we  have  lighted  a  candle  this  da}' 
in  England  which  shall  never  be  put  out."  The  pages  of 
history  are  illuminated  in  a  thousand  places  by  such  incidents 
as  these.  What  have  they  to  do  with  the  average,  humdrum 
life  of  men  and  women?  "Difficult  duty  is  never  far  off," 
but  difficult  duty  is  not  always  interesting  and  dramatic. 
Nevertheless,  all  life  is  of  a  piece ;  and  the  most  dramatic 
episodes  of  history  are  hut  the  toils  and  sacrifices,  the  battles 
and  the  victories,  of  the  humblest  people  on  God's  earth 
writ  in  some  larger  character.  That  great  hopes  are  for  great 
souls  means  that,  the  greater  the  soul,  the  greater  is  the  hope, 

*The  formula  is  Martineau's,  but  I  believe  the  treatment  is  unmixedly  my  own. 


Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls.  3 

through  all  the  hierarchic  range  from  the  most  great  and  fa- 
mous that  the  world  has  ever  known  to  the  most  weak  and 
despised  that  have,  after  some  sweet  and  noble  fashion,  kept 
the  eternal  law. 

There  is  always  action  and  reaction.  If  the  great  soul 
makes  the  great  hope,  the  great  hope  makes  the  great  soul, 
at  least  the  greater  soul.  Was  never  great  hope  yet  which 
did  not  greaten  him  that  cherished  it.  We  are  saved  by 
hope,  as  the  apostle  said.  Let  a  man  hope  for  any  great  and 
noble  thing,  a  high  success  in  business  or  in  art,  the  love  of 
a  true  woman,  his  children's  growth  in  every  spiritual  grace, 
the  advance  of  some  good  cause,  the  destruction  of  some 
vested  wrong,  the  triumph  of  some  glorious  principle,  the  op- 
portunity of  an  immortal  life,  and  the  strength  and  greatness 
of  that  hope  will  pass  into  his  soul.  How  was  it  in  the  tur- 
moil of  our  anti-slavery  days?  There  were  men  and  women 
who  would  have  gone  all  their  days  in  the  leanness  of  their 
souls  but  for  the  hope  that  slavery  might  perish  in  America, 
and  that  they  might  do  something,  however  little,  toward 
that  blessed  consummation.  And,  as  it  was,  they  were  trans- 
figured. The  splendor  of  the  hope  they  cherished  passed 
into  their  souls,  and  they  grew  in  spiritual  stature  as  the  grass 
grows  in  early  June  on  slopes  that  lie  all  open  to  the  sun. 
And  still,  the  greater  the  soul,  the  gi eater  was  the  hope. 
There  were  men  who  fought  all  through  the  w^ar  whose  only 
hope  was  to  see  the  rebels  punished  and  the  broken  union 
of  the  States  made  whole.  But  there  were  others  for  whom 
such  a  consummation  had  no  beauty  that  they  should  desire 
it,  unless  slavery  could  be  destroyed.  Then,  too,  although  a 
great  hope  in  the  soul,  organically  working  there,  is  ever  an 
expansive  force,  a  greatening  power,  a  great  hope  in  the  com- 
munity may  be  only  a  touchstone  which  reveals  the  essential 
littleness  and  baseness  of  many  who  pretend  to  feel  its  in- 
fluence, to  share  its  exaltation.  There  have  been  no  better 
men  among  us  than  those  who  shaped  the  earlier  fortunes  of 
the  anti-slavery  cause.  There  have  been  no  meaner  men 
among  us  than  those  who,  as  it  swept  to  victory,  made  haste 


4  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls. 

to  scramble  into  line,  that  they  might  sack  and  spoil.  For, 
of  all  meanness,  that  is  the  meanest  which  avails  itself  of  the 
triumph  of  a  glorious  cause  to  win  a  personal  advantage. 

The  great  hope  greatens  every  soul  that  entertains  it  with 
sincerity  and  truth.  But  there  are  hopes  of  \vhich  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  speak  as  great  apart  from  the  individual 
soul  by  which  they  are  cherished.  They  are  great  or  small 
according  as  they  are  greatly  or  meanly  held.  The  hope  of 
an  immortal  life  is  the  most  striking  illustration.  It  is  com- 
monly spoken  of  as  a  great  hope.  But  it  is  not  necessarily 
and  invariably  this.  Far  from  it.  It  is  only  great  as  it  is 
greatly  held ;  and  it  has  not  been  greatly  held  by  all  or 
most  of  those  who  have  held  it  within  Christian  bounds,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  millions  which  these  bounds  do  not 
include.  Could  anything  be  smaller,  more  contemptible, 
than  the  hope  of  an  immortal  life  involving  an  eternity  of 
misery  for  the  great  majority  of  men  ?  or  than  the  hope  of 
this  involving  everlasting  ^ons  of  idleness  and  stagnation  ? 
If  a  smaller,  meaner  hope  were  possible,  it  would  be  one  con- 
ditioned by  the  inhuman  death  of  Jesus,  as  if  his  blood  could 
make  our  record  clean  or  make  our  lack  of  moral  energy  less 
a  curse  and  shame.  It  is  not  strange,  seeing  that  the  hope 
of  immortality  has  often  been  so  meanly  and  so  basely  held, 
that  many  have  conceived  the  idea  that  it  is  essentially  a 
selfish,  miserable,  and  demoralizing  hope.  But  the  logic  of 
their  position  is  no  better  than  that  of  the  majority,  who 
imagine  it  essentially  great  and  noble.  It  is  great  whenever 
and  wherever  it  is  greatly  held.  And  it  has  been  greatly 
held  by  many  thousands  —  ay,  and  millions  —  in  the  past; 
and  it  is  greatly  held  by  many  thousands,  if  not  millions,  at 
the  present  time.  For  is  it  not  to  hold  it  greatly  to  hold  it 
as  a  hope  of  ever-widening  knowledge,  of  ever-nobler  service, 
and  of  ever-holier  love  ?  Is  it  not  to  hold  it  greatly  to  hold 
it  as  a  pledge  that  countless  millions  who  in  this  present  life 
are  beaten  down  and  marred,  so  that  the  glory  of  their  man- 
hood and  their  womanhood  is  utterly  obscured,  will  yet 
attain  to  all  that  they  have  lost  or  missed  1     But  such  great 


Great  Hopes  for  Great  Soids.  5 

hopes  as  these  are  not  for  little  souls.  They  are  for  souls 
great,  with  intelligence  and  love,  and  sympathy  with  others' 
misery  and  loss.  And  they  greaten  every  soul  that  holds 
them  patiently. 

"The  Faith  that  makes  Faithful"  is  the  title  of  a  little 
book  which  some  of  our  Western  friends  have  sent  forth  on 
a  message  of  good  will  to  men.  It  is  a  good  title  and  a  bet- 
ter book  ;  but  the  title  might  be  turned  about,  so  as  to  read 
"The  Faithfulness  that  makes  Faith,"  and  it  would  hint  a  finer 
truth  and  one  that  gets  an  equal  illustration  in  the  book  al- 
ready made.  Who  are  the  people  that  have  faith  in  anything, 
be  it  labor  of  their  hands  or  suffering  humanity  or  some  good 
cause  of  truth  or  righteousness  or  further  life  when  we  have 
finished  here,  if  not  those  whose  faithfulness  is  most  earnest 
and  enduring  in  those  conditions  and  relations  that  are  in 
close  alliance  with  these  various  things  ?  It  is  the  faithful 
man  who  has  faith  in  his  own  work,  whatever  it  may  be. 
You  cannot  do  anything  well,  or  even  try  to  do  it  well,  with- 
out coming  to  believe  in  it  as  something  worthy  of  the  effort 
of  an  honest  man.  Who  are  the  people  who  have  most  faith 
in  the  dangerous  and  perishing  classes  of  society,  if  not 
those  who  are  most  faithful  in  their  endeavors  to  do  some- 
thing to  abate  their  evil  tendencies  and  allay  their  misery  ? 
It  is  the  people  who  stand  off  at  a  distance,  and  look  at 
these  through  the  big  end  of  their  opera-glass,  who  tell  you 
that  any  endeavor  to  help  them  is  a  hopeless  business,  and 
that  by  meddling  you  will  mar  much  more  than  you  will 
mend.  Great  hopes  for  great  souls  !  Insanity  and  poverty 
and  crime, —  all  those  who  have  brought  great  souls  to  the 
battle  with  these  things  have  had  great  hopes  about  them. 
Those  who  have  given  themselves  with  intelligence  and  gen- 
erous ardor  to  the  treatment  of  the  deaf  and  dumb,  the 
blind  or  the  insane,  have  never  been  persuaded  of  the  hope- 
lessness of  any  of  these  people. "^  Who  are  the  men  here 
in  America  who  have  no  confidence  in  our  political  future, 

*  Read  the  new  Life  of  Dorothea  Dix  for  freshest  proof  of  this  abiding  law. 


6  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls. 

who  believe  that  what  with  bribery  and  corruption,  the  rings 
and  bosses,  the  lobby  and  the  machine,  we  are  fated  to  go 
down  and  down  till  we  shall  be  a  byword  and  a  hissing 
among  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  ?  They  are  the  dainty 
do-nothings ;  and,  if  the  things  they  weakly  prophesy  do  not 
come  true,  it  will  not  be  because  they  have  not  negatively 
done  their  best  to  help  them  to  this  end.  The  men  who 
have  faith  in  our  political  future,  who  do  not  believe  that 
bribery  and  corruption,  that  the  rings  and  bosses,  that  the 
lobby  and  the  machine,  as  they  are  at  present  organized, 
have  come  to  stay,  and  to  shame  and  curse  and  ruin  us  for- 
ever, are  the  men  who  are  seeking  earnestly  for  ways  and 
means  to  make  these  evils  less,  the  men  who  hate  a  policy 
of  favoritism  or  corruption  all  the  more  when  it  is  their  own 
party  that  offends. 

And  nowhere  is  it  more  apparent  that  it  is  faithfulness  that 
makes  faith,  that  great  hopes  are  for  great  souls,  than  in  the 
matter  of  men's  hope  of  an  immortal  life.  Be  the  soul- 
greatness  that  of  intellect  or  affection,  the  faithfulness  that 
of  indomitable  science  or  unconquerable  love,  the  lesson  is 
the  same.  To  spend  one's  life  in  high  endeavor  to  make 
the  unknown  universe  and  the  unknown  God  more  fully 
known,  and,  after  all,  to  feel  how  little  has  been  learned,  how 
much  remains  to  solve,  and  not  to  hope  that  death  is  not  the 
end,  that  after  that  the  search  will  still  go  on,  and  add  incal- 
culable areas  to  our  present  boundaries  of  knowledge, — 
I  do  not  see  how  this  can  ever  be.  And,  as  there  are  none 
to  whom  the  sphere  of  the  unknown  is  so  immense  as  it  is  to 
those  who  have  done  most  to  beat  its  limits  back,  for  these 
the  hope  of  opportunity  for  further  knowledge  must  ever  be 
most  strong  and  masterful.  But  the  greatness  of  the  immor- 
tal hope  is  not  exhausted  by  its  intellectual  elements.  The 
faithfulness  that  makes  faith  is  not  above  the  faithfulness  of 
men's  unwearying  search  for  knowledge :  it  is  even  more  the 
faithfulness  of  heans  that  beat  in  happy  unison  for  many 
years.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  that  there  are  those  for  whom 
the  immortal  years  suggest  more  difficulties  than  they  solve. 


Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls.  7 

Let  annihilation  cleave  the  Gordian  knot  which  they  have 
fingered  at  in  vain !  Better  eternal  sleep  than  smote  again 
by  eyes  too  pure  to  look  upon  uncleanness !  But  where 
the  souls  are  great,  where  there  has  been  constant  faithful- 
ness, there  the  great  hope  of  a  renewed  and  glorified  affection 
springs  into  life,  and  grows  and  flourishes  like  tropic  verdure 
drenched  with  mighty  rains  and  daily  flooded  by  the  sun's 
exhaustless  urn. 

But  is  not  the  doctrine  that  great  hopes  are  for  great  souls 
a  doctrine  of  discouragement  ?  If  this  doctrine  be  true, 
must  I  not  seem  to  hear  a  murmur  coming  back  to  me  from 
those  whom  I  address, — "  Then  they  can  never  be  for  us  "? 
You  dare  not  think  you  have  attained  so  much  of  knowledge 
or  of  good  that  the  great  souls  account  you  of  their  company, 
and  I  approve  your  modesty  in  this.  The  great  souls  of  in- 
tellect and  knowledge  are  but  few  :  the  great  souls  of  public 
service  and  heroic  action  are  not  a  greater  company.  If 
great  hopes  are  for  these  alone,  the  outlook  is  not  so  inspir- 
ing and  encouraging  as  we  could  wish.  It  is  better  that  a 
few  should  have  such  hopes  than  none.  They  have  their  re- 
ward ;  and,  moreover,  something  passes  from  them  into 
lesser  souls,  something  akin  to  their  great  hopes  though  not 
of  equal  grandeur.  The  great  souls  greaten  us,  and  so  pre- 
pare us  for  participation  in  the  hopes  they  cherish  and  by 
which  they  are  sustained.  It  is  not  as  if  there  were  only 
two  kinds  of  souls, —  the  great  and  small.  The  smallest 
shade  into  the  greatest  by  innumerable  degrees.  We  are 
not  dealing  with  statical,  but  with  dynamical  relations. 
The  greater  the  soul,  the  greater  the  hope,  is  the  corollary 
of  our  proposition,  to  which  we  shall  do  well  to  attend. 
And  then,  too,  thank  Heaven,  it  is  not  as  if  the  greatness  of 
men's  souls  were  a  matter  wholly  of  their  intellectual  vol- 
ume and  momentum.  Pope's  description  of  Bacon  as  "the 
wisest,  brightest,  meanest  of  mankind  "  may  not  have  been 
entirely  true,  but  it  suggests  a  possible  combination,  and 
wherever  it  exists,  no  matter  how  magnificent  the  intellect, 
you  have  a  little  soul ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are 


8  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls. 

those  who,  without  being  wonderfully  wise  and  bright,  have 
so  little  meanness  in  their  composition,  are  so  large-hearted, 
brotherly,  that  to  deny  them  greatness  of  soul  would  be  as 
absurd  as  to  deny  grandeur  to  Niagara  or  splendor  to  the 
mountains  and  the  sea.  The  miner  in  his  bucket  crying, 
*' Stand  from  under!"  as  he  goes  flying  down  the  shaft, 
death  not  a  minute  off;  the  egg-gatherer  of  the  Orkneys 
who  cuts  the  rope  above  him  and  so  welcomes  death,  that  he 
may  save  the  man  above  him  for  his  wife  and  babes  if  haply, 
where  the  rope  is  frayed  at  the  cliff's  edge,  it  may  still  bear 
one  man's  weight ;  the  woman  told  that  God  had  given  her 
husband  over  to  his  evil  drunken  ways  quietly  saying,  "  Then 
I  must  stand  him  in  God's  stead," — these  threadbare  stories 
and  a  hundred  more  of  similar  character,  revealing  the 
spontaneous  and  innate  nobilities  of  human  life,  are  not 
stories  of  men  and  women  of  Baconian  minds,  of  splendid 
intellectual  endowments,  but  none  the  less  they  are  stories 
of  great  souls.  Such,  you  may  think,  are  hardly  less  excep- 
tional than  the  master  minds.  Such  as  have  opportunity  to 
prove  themselves  members  of  this  order,  yes.  Such  as  have 
proved  themselves  and  have  had  their  stories  told  are  fewer 
still.  But  there  are  many  who  have  never  had  their  stories 
told  who  have  approved  themselves  of  the  same  stock  and 
lineage  as  the  most  famous  in  the  Book  of  Golden  Deeds, 
and  there  are  thousands  more  who  needed  but  the  opportu- 
nity to  do  as  valiantly  for  God  and  man  as  any  of  the  heroes 
of  imperishable  renown.  The  great  souls  are  not  few. 
They  wear  no  badge  by  which  you  can  distinguish  them 
from  other  people  on  the  street.  Sometimes  their  clothes 
are  of  the  cheapest  kind  and  sadly  overworn.  But,  if  not 
the  actuality,  the  possibility  of  infinite  patience  and  heroic 
love,  is  there.  It  is  not  the  dramatic  moment  only  that 
brings  out  the  quality  of  the  great  souls  that  walk  in  broad- 
cloth or  in  shoddy,  equally  unknown  to  one  another  and 
to  the  world  at  large.  It  is  very  seldom  this.  It  is  much 
oftener  the  long-drawn  weeks  and  months  and  years  through 
which  the  faithful  watch  by  beds  of  sickness,  or  nurse  some 


Great  Hopes  for  Great  Soiits.  9 

feeble  intellect,  or  try  to  brace  some  weak  and  tottering  will. 
If  all  these  could  by  sheer  force  of  their  spiritual  greatness 
generate  a  luminous  cloud,  what  an  illumination  there  would 
nightly  be  upon  our  city  streets  and  far  out  on  lonely  coun- 
try roads !  The  palatial  front  and  the  shabby  tenement 
would  blaze  with  rival  splendor.  But  such  are  not  the  ways 
of  God.  No  faintest  halo  ever  marked  off  his  saints  and 
saviours  from  their  fellow-men.  But  some  of  them  are 
known  ;  some  of  them  to  many,  the  most  of  them  only  to  a 
few,  but  so  well  known  to  these,  thanked  with  such  tremors 
of  their  dying  lips,  such  recognition  of  their  dying  eyes, 
that  all  the  laurels  of  the  world-famous  heroes  pale  and 
wither  in  comparison  with  those  that  rest  upon  their  aching 
foreheads  like  the  hand  of  God. 

There  is  no  lack  of  opportunity  for  spiritual  greatness. 
Great  souls  declare  themselves  most  frequently  by  doing 
little  things  in  a  great  way.  There  is  a  great  way  and  a 
little  way  of  doing  almost  everything  that  waits  the  pressure 
of  men's  hands.  What  is  it  that  Emerson  has  told  us  about 
braiding  galaxies  when  we  imagine  we  are  only  braiding 
mats  or  doing  something  of  no  possible  significance  ?  We 
are  doing  better  than  that.  We  are  braiding  character, — 
braiding  it  out  of  our  housekeeping  and  school-keeping, 
out  of  our  buying  and  selling,  out  of  our  making  and  mend- 
ing. There  are  activities  in  which  men  engage  which  have 
no  legitimacy.  They  will  do  well  if  out  of  these  they  do  not 
braid  a  rope  to  hang  themselves  or  some  victim  of  their 
hideous  greed.  But  it  is  never  because  an  activity  is 
humble,  it  is  only  because  it  is  illegitimate,  that  it  does  not 
furnish  opportunity  for  spiritual  growth.  It  is  not  in  marble, 
but  in  clay,  that  the  true  sculptor  manifests  the  genius  of  his 
shaping  hand.  There  is  life-stuff  as  little  beautiful  as  the 
sculptor's  cla}',  no  daintier  than  that  to  work,  mere  mud 
upon  the  hands,  out  of  which  souls  are  shaped  into  a  more 
dazzling  beauty  than  the  Apollo  Belvidere  wears,  or  any 
Venus,  even  the  glorious  creature  of  the  little  Melian  farm. 
We  often  hear  men  talk  as  if  the  business  life  of  modern 


lO  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls. 

times  were  fatal  to  men's  larger  life.  On  the  contrary,  there 
is  no  modern  life,  except  that  of  politics,  which  presents  so 
grand  an  opportunity.  That  political  life  is  often  horribly 
degraded  and  that  business  life  is  often  miserably  selfish 
and  depraved  are  propositions  which  have  little  need  of 
proof.  Hence  the  more  need  of  men  who,  measuring  their 
strength  against  the  obstacles  that  block  their  way,  prove 
themselves  equal  to  the  exigencies  of  the  hour.  It  is  said 
that  Napoleon  was  never  quite  himself  till  the  battle  began 
to  go  against  him.  Then  he  put  on  terror  and  victory  as  a 
robe.  To  be  just  -and  fear  not  in  our  political  complica- 
tions, to  be  so  just  and  generous  in  the  management  of  one's 
business  as  to  do  something  that  will  help  convince  the 
socialist  and  anarchist  that,  if  they  ever  had  an  occupation, 
it  is  gone, —  here  is  an  opportunity  that  may  well  pique  the 
courage  of  our  bravest  men,  and  in  its  seizure  and  improve- 
ment magnify  their  souls  to  the  proportions  of  the  greatest 
of  our  own  or  any  time. 

Great  hopes  for  great  souls  !  No  matter  how  the  great- 
ness comes, —  from  large  appreciation  of  the  scientific  appre- 
hension of  the  world,  from  wide  intelligence  of  the  develop- 
ment of  man  through  many  generations,  from  devotion  to 
great  causes  or  to  the  maimed  and  miserable  victims  of  an 
organization  and  environment  all  of  whose  dice  are  loaded 
for  the  throw  of  weakness,  shame,  and  sin,  from  patient  ser- 
vice in  the  humblest  daily  round,  from  strenuous  opposition 
to  the  most  sordid,  mean,  and  selfish  tendencies  of  our  polit- 
ical and  commercial  life, —  no  matter  how  it  comes,  it  will 
always  bring  with  it  the  great  hope  for  those  for  whom  we 
work,  for  the  great  future  of  humanity,  and  for  the  power 
and  blessing  of  an  endless  life. 

If,  then,  great  hopes  attract  our  admiration  and  desire,  and 
we  would  have  them  for  our  personal  possession  and  for  the 
abiding  peace  and  comfort  of  our  hearts,  we  shall  go  about 
to  greaten  our  souls  by  every  honorable  device.  By  any 
device  that  is  not  honorable  it  is  very  sure  we  cannot 
greaten  them.     We  shall  sit  patiently  at  the  feet  of  Science, 


Great  Hopes  for  Great  Souls.  1 1 

and  listen  to  the  wondrous  story  that  she  has  to  tell.  The 
more  vast  and  wonderful  the  universe  in  which  we  live  with 
conscious  joy,  the  greater  will  be  our  eager  and  impassioned 
souls.  I  cannot  understand  the  ill-disguised  or  frank  con- 
tempt with  which  the  religious  partisan  frequently  waives 
aside  the  scientific  aspect  of  the  world,  as  if  that  had  for  us, 
and  could  have,  no  religious  meaning  whatsoever.  For  this, 
I  take  it,  is  God's  world ;  and,  if  his  soul  has  been  engaged 
upon  it  some  millions  and  billions  of  years,  with  plastic 
force,  to  make  it  what  it  is,  we  shall  do  well,  I  think,  to 
spend  a  little  of  our  time  in  thinking  his  thoughts  after  him 
and  endeavoring  to  enter  into  the  meaning  and  spirit  of  his 
work.  There  is  more  of  real  worship  in  the  hushed  and 
reverent  step  with  which  we  follow  a  Darwin  or  a  Spencer 
on  his  majestic  course  than  in  all  the  formal  liturgies  and 
prayers.  It  is  the  man,  sometimes,  more  than  his  thought 
that  greatens  us, —  his  life's  unwritten  poetry,  or  eloquence, 
or  statuesque  repose.  I  know  of  nothing  that  is  more  great- 
ening  to  the  soul,  save  only  its  own  constant  striving  for 
the  best  and  honorablest  things,  than  intercourse  with  the 
truest  and  the  best  of  men, —  such  intercourse  as  is  afforded 
us  by  their  biographies  written  as  Channing's  or  as  Emer- 
son's by  men  having  a  providential  fitness  for  their  task. 
Fear  not  that  by  such  intercourse  you  wall  be  debarred  from 
doing  any  worthy  social  task.  These  men  will  shame  your 
pleasant  idleness,  will  bind  your  corselet  and  your  greaves 
upon  you  and  send  you  forth  to  battle  with  earth's  ignorance 
and  wrong ;  will  set  a  trumpet  to  your  lips  that  you  may  blow 

"  A  Roland  blast  to  flood  this  grim  defile 
Till  echoes  pour  beyond  it  " 

that  shall  summon  other  men  to  come  and  fight  upon  your 
side.  .And  yet  another  way  of  greatening  your  soul  is  to  lay 
bare  your  spirit  to  the  hapjoy  influence  of  living  men 
stronger  and  better  than  yourselves,  and  to  theirs,  also, 
whom  death  "  leads  enfranchised  on "  and  whose  remem- 
bered truth  and  love  are  laws  we  dare  not  disobev. 


12  Great  Hopes  for  Great  Sotds. 

"  Living,  our  loved  ones  make  us  what  they  dream  ; 
Dead,  if  they  see,  they  know  us  as  we  are. 
Henceforward  we  must  be,  not  merely  seem  ; 
Bitterer  woe  than  death  it  were  by  far 
To  fail  their  hopes  whose  love  can  still  redeem  ; 
Loss  were  thrice  loss  which  thus  their  faith  could  mar." 

The  last  great  means  of  greatening  our  souls  has  been 
already  named.  It  is  to  find  the  elements  of  greatness  in 
the  humblest  tasks,  to  compel  the  opportunity  for  greatness 
from  the  cares  and  troubles  and  perplexities  which  make  up 
the  warp  and  woof  of  every  fleeting  day.  There  are  no 
greater  souls  than  those  who  know  this  secret  of  the  world 
and  who  have  shaped  their  lives  according  to  its  law.  And, 
as  their  souls,  so  also  are  their  hopes  :  for  all  who  struggle 
and  aspire,  for  all  whom  grievous  burdens  crush  and  maim, 
for  all  whose  fond  imagination  pictures  for  them  a  better 
country,  even  a  heavenly,  wherein  they  shall  again  behokl 
the  faces  that  once  brightened  all  their  w^ays.  But  the  great 
soul  is  better  than  the  greatest  hope. 


(( 


A  MERE  MAN." 


There  are  some  texts  so  obviously  good  that  it  were  churl- 
ishness to  pass  them  by,  and  not  to  set  one  now  and  then  in 
the  forefront  of  the  battle.  Certainly,  having  chosen  for  my 
subject  "  A  Mere  Man,"  nothing  could  be  more  natural  than 
for  me  to  find  a  text,  or  motto,  in  the  Psalmist's  question, 
*'  What  is  man,  that  thou  art  mindful  of  him  ? "  and  his 
answer,  "  Thou  hast  made  him  little  lower  than  God." 
Strange,  is  it  not  ?  that  such  a  text  as  that  should  have 
awaited  Channing's  doctrine  of  the  Dignity  of  Human 
Nature  for  two  millenniums  and  half  another !  True,  in  the 
King  James  translation  it  reads  "  but  little  lower  than  the 
angels "  ;  and  the  controversial  ingenuity  of  the  good  old 
times  was  quite  equal  to  contending  that  it  meant  the  fallen 
ones.  But,  had  the  present  reading,  which  was  that  of  all  the 
scholars  for  a  long  time  in  advance  of  the  revision,  always 
been  the  English  reading,  it  would  probably  have  made  no 
difference.  For  though,  in  general,  the  Calvinistic  theolo- 
gians got  their  theology  from  the  Old  Testament,  if  they  found 
anything  sweet  and  pleasant  there,  they  passed  it  by ;  and,  if 
they  found  anything  particularly  disagreeable  in  the  New 
Testament,  they  pounced  upon  it  like  an  ant  upon  an  aphis, 
quick  to  appropriate  its  limpid  juice. 

The  phrase  ''  a  mere  man  "  is  the  phrase  which  has  oftener 
than  any  other  expressed  the  contemptuous  sense  of  the 
Trinitarian  and  other  supernaturalists  for  the  humanitarian 
conception  of  Jesus.  There  has  always  lurked  in  it  a  miser- 
able fallacy ;  for  into  the  "  mere  man  "  the  orthodox  con- 
testant has  imported  his  own  conception  of  humanity,  and,  so 
doing,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  Unitarian  assertion  of  the 


14  ''A  Mere  Man^ 

humanity  of  Jesus  has  seemed  to  him  a  great  indignity. 
For  his  own  conception  of  humanity  has  been  the  denial  to 
it  of  any  physical  or  intellectual  or  moral  good.  And  tor 
this  conception,  it  must  be  allowed,  he  has  had  the  warrant 
of  the  New  Testament  in  no  half-way  fashion.  It  has  been 
very  common  among  Unitarians  to  insist  that  the  traditional 
theology  of  Christendom  is  a  perversion  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment teachings.  And  so  it  often  is,  but  not  always.  Hardly 
can  it  be  shown  that  Augustine  or  Calvin  painted  human 
nature  blacker  than  did  Paul.  Hardly  can  it  be  shown  how 
any  one  could  paint  it  blacker  then  he  painted  it.  That 
Channing,  more  certain  that  his  rational  nature  was  from 
God  than  that  any  book  was  the  expression  of  his  will,  and 
attending  to  his  rational  nature  for  the  voice  of  truth  as  to 
no  book  whatever,  clearly  thought  out  and  bravely  published 
the  Dignity  of  Human  Nature,  is  not  greatly  to  be  wondered 
at,  though  it  is  an  ample  sign  of  the  essential  rationalism  of 
his  intellectual  procedure.  But  that  his  Unitarian  contem- 
poraries generally  should  have  accepted  his  doctrine  of 
human  nature,  while  immersed  in  barren  textuality,  while 
thinking  it  necessary  to  find  chapter  and  verse  for  their 
opinions,  is  passing  strange  ;  and  it  should  help  us  to  be 
tolerant  of  those  progressive  orthodoxists  who  seek  in  the 
New  Testament  a  warrant  for  their  aberrations  from  the 
Westminster  standards.  One  thing  is  certain  :  that,  if  the 
elder  Unitarians  imagined  foolishly  that  Paul  'could  be  in- 
duced to  testify  for  Channing's  doctrine  of  the  Dignity  of 
Human  Nature,  there  are  many  of  the  younger,  and  one  at 
least  whose  years  overlap  by  thirty-seven  the  years  of  Chan- 
ning's life,  who  recognize  that  Paul's  doctrine  of  human 
nature  is  absolutely  antagonistic  to  their  own.  The  one  is 
Martineau,  in  whose  recent  work,  sent  forth  in  the  absolutely 
sound  and  sweet  maturity  of  his  eighty-sixth  year,  Paul's 
doctrine  of  human  nature  is  exhibited  without  any  least 
disguise  ;  and  the  nakedness  of  its  deformity  may  well  make 
the  non-Revisionists  of  our  Presbyterian  assemblies  say,  "  He 
has  become  as  one  of  us."     He  has  shown  that  theirs  is  the 


''A   Mere  Maur  15 

New  Testament, —  at  least,  the  Pauline  doctrine ;  that  Augus- 
tine and  Gottschalk,  Pascal  and  Calvin  and  Edwards,  did 
not,  and  could  not,  exaggerate  the  utter  hideousness  and  hope- 
lessness of  that.  The  progressive  orthodoxists  will  doubtless 
say,  "  This  is  the  most  unkindest  cut  of  all, —  just  as  we  were 
giving  up  our  Calvinism  for  Dr.  Martineau  to  say  that  the  New 
Testament  is  for  it.  How  will  the  non-revising  heathen  rage  !" 
But  it  is  all  right.  It  is  just  as  well  for  the  sects  to  go  on  believ- 
ing the  traditional  doctrines  until  they  are  prepared  to  reject 
them  as  Martineau  does,  not  on  account  of  their  lack  of  Bible 
warrant,  but  on  account  of  their  intrinsic  irrationality.  Saint 
Paul  is  for  the  utter  physical  and  intellectual  and  moral  inca- 
pacity of  human  nature ;  he  has  reduced  its  baseness  to  its 
lowest  terms.  But  what  good  reason  is  there  for  setting  up 
the  opinions  of  Saint  Paul  as  a  standard  of  belief  for  men 
who  are  alive  when  he  has  been  full  eighteen  centuries  dead? 
There  is  none.  And  this  perception  is  the  most  significant 
that  appears  in  the  ebullition  of  doctrinal  change  that  is  so 
lively  at  the  present  time.  And  the  most  surprising,  the 
most  comical,  the  most  pathetic  aspect  of  the  matter  is  the 
endeavor  of  the  liberals  to  make  out  a  New  Testament  argu- 
ment for  their  liberality.  It  is  like  the  scramble  of  men  to 
get  on  board  a  sinking  ship  when  the  solid  land  is  easily 
within  the  reach  of  their  endeavor,  when  they  would  drift  to 
perfect  peace  and  safety  in  a  little  while. 

Not  only  in  times  past  has  the  orthodox  contestant  im- 
ported his  own  idea  of  humanity,  the  Calvinistic  idea,  into 
the  phrase  "  mere  man,"  but  the  phrase  itself  is  of  his  own 
invention.  Those  who  have  affirmed  the  simple  humanity 
of  Jesus  have  believed  too  much  in  humanity  to  qualify  it 
with  such  a  word  as  "  mere,"  always  a  qualification  of  con- 
tempt, as  when  men  talk  of  "  mere  morality,"  on  which 
Emerson  retorted  that  it  was  like  saying,  "  Poor  God,  with 
nobody  to  help  him  ! "  The  deification  of  Jesus,  or  his 
exaltation  to  a  more  than  human  standing,  has  always 
marked  the  tendency  to  a  low  view  of  human  nature,  or  the 
survival  of  such  a  view  in  men's  general  thinking,  even  when 


1 6  ''A  Mere  Man.'' 

specifically  discarded.  Channing,  it  is  true,  and  with  him 
many  others,  long  maintained  the  superhumanity  of  Jesus  in 
connection  with  the  Dignity  of  Human  Nature ;  but,  as  time 
went  on,  Channing  perceived  that  his  idea  of  humanity  was 
so  large  that  his  idea  of  Jesus  had  in  it  all  the  sky-room  that 
it  wanted  in  which  to  beat  its  tireless  pinions  without  mete 
or  bound. 

"Not  a  mere  man,  but  a  man  !"  has  been  the  answer  of 
the  Unitarian  to  those  objecting  to  his  humanitarian  concep- 
tion of  the  great  prophet,  saint,  and  martyr,  from  whom 
Christianity  derives  the  inspiration  of  its  most  beautiful  com- 
passion and  its  most  perfect  trust.  If  the  Unitarian  has 
written  it,  he  has  written  Man  with  a  capital  letter.  The 
ancient  Latins  could  have  managed  better  if  they  had  wished 
to  express  the  same  idea.  They  had  two  words,  homo  and 
vir.  Homo  was  the  generic  man  ;  vir,  the  ideal  man.  With 
such  distinctions  possible,  to  say  a  mere  homo  might  express 
something  intelligible  and  fit.  And  if  any  should  so  desig- 
nate Jesus,  or  any  other  towering  personality,  we  might  reply, 
"No,  not  a  mere  homo,  but  a  vir  I''''  Having  no  such  dis- 
tinction, the  word  "  man,"  expressing  everything  from  the 
highest  of  the  mammalia  to  the  being  who  has  made  possible 
the  centuries  of  history,  the  centuries  of  art  and  science  and 
government  and  religion,  the  centuries  of  discovery  and  in- 
vention and  industrial  thrift  and  skill,  the  towering  personal- 
ities which  tempt  us  to  believe  that  they  alone  make  up  the 
sum  of  history, —  having  no  word  but  "  man  "  to  express  all 
this  imperial  range  from  depth  to  height,  the  phrase  "  a  mere 
man"  is  for  us,  perhaps,  as  meaningless,  as  absurd,  as  any 
that  has  ever  been  the  current  coin  of  theological  exchange. 
The  best  comment  ever  made  on  it  is  that  of  one  himself 
"  a  mere  man  "  after  the  canons  of  the  traditional  theology, 
who  said,  speaking  in  Hamlet's  voice:  "What  a  piece  of 
work  is  man  !  How  noble  in  reason  !  How  infinite  in  fac- 
ulties !  in  form  and  moving,  how  express  and  admirable !  in 
action,  how  like  an  angel!  in  apprehension,  how  like  a 
god !  " 


''A  Mere  Manr  1/ 

The  "mere  man"  of  theology  is  man  in  the  entire  range 
of  his  natural  capacity ;  man  without  any  supernatural  assist- 
ance, save  as  a  world  brimful  of  God  continually  assists  the 
man  who  is  the  product  of  its  life  and  law.  The  subject  has 
two  aspects,  one  static  and  the  other  dynamic.  The  latter 
is  an  aspect  which  has  receiv^ed  immense  enhancement  from 
the  studies  of  anthropology  and  biology  during  the  last  half- 
century.  Not  to  go  further  back  than  that,  the  antiquity  of 
man  was  some  six  thousand  years,  and  its  first  step  was  a  fall 
from  which  no  supernatural  assistance  had  been  able  to  help 
it  to  its  feet.  A  finger  or  a  toe  may  have  straightened  out, 
but  the  whole  body  was  as  prone  as  ever  in  such  mire  as 
even  swine  do  not  delight  to  wallow  in,  according  to  the 
latest  prophets  of  their  natural  decency  and  self-respect. 
But  within  the  last  half-century  the  antiquity  of  man  has 
been  extended  by  —  I  choose  a  moderate  estimate  —  some 
five  hundred  thousand,  years.  So  long  ago  man  fairly  got 
upon  his  feet,  and  with  those  differences  of  intellectual  ca- 
pacity from  his  "  poor  relations "  which  had  in  them  a 
boundless  possibility.  But,  back  of  that,  what  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  years,  millions  on  millions,  went  to  the 
making  of  the  human  animal,  albeit  the  first  and  lowest  of 
his  kind  ! 

If  man,  in  any  aspect  of  his  life,  can  be  called  "  a  mere 
man,"  surely  it  is  on  the  dividing  line  so  shadowy,  so  waver- 
ing, both  physically  and  intellectually,  that  separates  the 
human  from  the  lower  world.  But  to  speak  contemptuously 
even  of  such  humanity  is  a  most  strange  and  daring  com- 
ment on  the  long  patience  and  persistency  of  the  Infinite 
and  Eternal  Power,  who  probably  would  not  have  taken  so 
much  time  to  bring  a  man  from  the  ascidian,  and  the  ascid- 
ian  from  the  insensate  rock,  if  there  had  been  a  shorter  or  a 
better  way.  Accepting  the  account  in  Genesis,  it  would  have 
been  a  different  matter.  Not  much  could  be  expected  of  a 
man  made  on  the  sixth  day,  after  five  days  of  such  immense 
and  various  activity,  with  the  inertia  of  the  restful  Sabbath 
sending  its  dreamy  shadow  on  before.     That  man  so  made 


1 8  ''A  Mere  Majtr 

% 

should  fall  at  once  was   altogether  natural.     He  must  have 

had  that  sense  of  "  goneness  "  from  the  start  which  would  have 
made  anything  substantial,  and  especially  an  apple,  impossi- 
ble to  refuse.  I  do  but  jest,  not  at  the  dear  and  sweet  old 
fable,  which  I  love  as  well  as  any  can,  but  at  the  after-appro- 
bation of  the  apologists,  who  make  themselves  unutterably 
foolish  that  the  old  legend  may  be  impossibly  and  absurdly 
wise.  In  all  seriousness,  the  dynamic  aspect  of  humanity, 
man's  slow  emergence  from  the  homogeneous  simplicity  of 
primordial  matter,  through  countless  intermediary  forms,  if 
there  is  really  an  omnipotent  God  working  through  all  the 
processes  of  the  material  world,  is  eloquent  of  man's  signifi- 
cance for  the  Eternal  Power.  And  it  is  eloquent  of  man's 
essential  greatness  that  from  such  low  beginnings  he  could 
come  to  be  at  length  a  being  of  such  large  discourse,  looking 
before  and  after,  and  either  way  seeing  so  much  to  humble 
him  and  make  him  proud.  I  tried  to  put  my  thought  of  this 
into  a  poem  once,  and  this  was  how  it  came  :  — 

Thou  for  whose  birth  the  whole  creation  yearned 

Through  countless  ages  of  the  morning  world, 

Who  first  in  fiery  vapors  dimly  hurled, 
Next  to  the  senseless  granite  slowly  turned, 

Then  to  the  plant  which  grew  to  something  more, — 
Humblest  of  creatures  that  draw  breath  of  life, — 
Wherefrom,  through  infinites  of  patient  pain, 

Came  conscious  man  to  reason  and  adore : 
Shall  we  be  ashamed  because  such  things  have  been, 

Or  bate  one  jot  of  our  ancestral  pride  ? 

Nay,  in  thyself  art  thou  not  deified 
That  from  such  depths  thou  couldst  such  summits  win  ? 

While  the  long  way  behind  is  prophecy 

Of  those  perfections  which  are  yet  to  be. 

Now  let  US  turn  from  the  dynamics  of  the  matter,  and  look 
at  it  for  a  few  moments  statically.  Take  any  average  or 
ordinary  man,  no  Shakspere  or  Newton^  no  Raphael  or 
Beethoven,  no  great  or  famous  one  of  any  kind,  but  just  a 
good,  fair,  every-day  human  being  of  the  kind  that  cross 
Brooklyn  bridge  by  tens  of  thousands  every  morning  to  their 


''A  Mere  Man:'  19 

day's  work,  and  come  back  at  night  a  little  manlier,  if  they 
have  done  it  well.  Even  of  such  a  one  how  well  might 
Shakspere  say,  "  What  a  piece  of  work  is  man  !  "  True,  he 
has  much  in  common  with  some  lower  types.  His  bony 
structure  is  part  for  part  the  same  as  the  gorilla's,  a  few 
less  bones  in  maturity  in  either  case  than  in  early  life.  His 
tissues  are  of  the  same  structure :  his  respiratory  and  circu- 
latory functions  are  the  same.  What,  then  ?  Is  it  so  much 
the  worse  for  man  ?  No,  it  is  so  much  the  better  for  the 
gorilla.  This  anatomy,  this  physiology,  would  be  wonderful 
and  beautiful  if  they  were  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  a 
fiend,  as  not  unfrequently  I  fear  they  are.  What  a  piece  of 
work  is  a  man  !  If  you  have  any  doubts  of  it,  take  any  good 
anatomical  treatise, —  that  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  is 
admirably  done, —  and  study  first  the  bony  structure,  and 
then  see  how  that  is  clothed  upon  with  the  muscles,  and  how 
the  nervous  system  radiates  through  them ;  and  the  cellular 
structure  of  the  tissues, —  how  wonderful  that  is! — and  then 
turn  to  physiology,  and  study  there  the  circulatory  and  respir- 
atory functions  of  the  organism  and  I  am  sure  that  "  mere  " 
or  any  other  depreciatory  or  contemptuous  adjective  for.such 
an  organism,  will  hardly  seem  to  you  a  thing  to  be  endured. 
So  studying  and  so  considering,  we  find,  says  one  for  whom 
exaggeration  is  impossible,  "  that  we  are  quite  unconsciously 
bearing  about  in  our  bodily  structure  a  laboratory  of  enor- 
mous power,  which,  with  an  energy  of  chemical  action  we  can 
no  way  conceive,  is  turning  out  every  day  four  or  five  gallons 
of  its  highly  elaborated  compounds.  We  find  a  pailful  of 
warm  blood  rushing  as  fast  as  a  strong  man  walks  through 
innumerable  arteries  and  veins,  propelled  by  a  muscle  weigh- 
ing less  than  a  pound,  that  shall  not  pause  a  single  second 
in  its  energetic  contractions  and  expansions  for  a  lifetime  of 
more  than  eighty  years.  We  find  a  chemistry  of  digestion 
so  potent  [with  its  astonishing  solvent]  as  in  a  few  hours  to 
change  the  beggar's  crust  and  the  epicure's  banquet  of  fifty 
flavors  into  the  same  indistinguishable  vital  fluid.  We  find 
an  electric  battery  to  do  our  thinking  by,  made  of  more  than 


20  ''A  Mere  Man 


>> 


twelve  hundred  million  cells,  connected  by  five  thousand 
million  filaments  of  nerve."  As  with  the  circulatory  and 
nervous  functions,  so  with  all  the  rest.  We  have  only  to 
look  at  them  closely  to  appreciate  how  marvellously  curious 
and  wonderful  they  are.  As  with  the  wonder,  so  with  the 
beauty.  The  sculptor  has  reported  it  in  bronze  and  marble, 
the  painter  with  his  brush ;  and  their  report  is  —  oh,  how 
feeble  in  comparison  with  the  living,  breathing,  smiling, 
laughing  actualities  of  form  and  face  !  You  go  to  the  great 
exhibition,  and  a  hundred  faces  of  the  visitors  beguile  you 
from  the  faces  on  the  wall.  But  the  children's  portraits, — 
they  are  wonderfully  fair.  Yes,  and  on  the  way  home  from 
the  gallery  you  see  a  dozen  or  a  score  so  dainty  sweet  or  so 
divinely  beautiful  through  rags  and  dirt  that  you  say  in  your 
heart  you  will  not  go  to  the  galleries  any  more,  but  only 
up  and  down  the  streets  and  to  the  parks  and  slums. 

"  How  noble  in  reason,"  Shakspere  says,  "  how  infinite 
in  faculties  !  "  and  by  this  bridge  of  gold  we  pass  from  the 
consideration  of  the  physical  to  the  consideration  of  the 
intellectual  and  emotional  and  moral  man.  Again  I  say, 
forget  the  great  and  famous  ones.  Remember  only  the 
average  people  of  the  world.  If  there  are  any  mere  men 
in  the  world,  these  are  they.  Now,  take  any  one  of  them, 
and  note  the  quality  of  his  intellectual  life.  Note  that  it  is 
so  deep  that  for  thousands  of  years  the  philosophers,  the 
psychologists,  have  been  dropping  their  plummets  into  it,  and 
have  not  as  yet  taken  its  gauge.  How  much  does  this  mere 
man  contribute  to  that  vision  of  the  world  which  he  enjoys ! 
"Things  are  not  what  they  seem,"  says  Longfellow.  Nay, 
but  they  are.  The  reality  is  that  in  which  the  object  and 
the  subject  both  unite.  But  how  much  is  the  object's,  how 
much  is  the  subject's  part  ?  The  percept  and  the  recept 
mark  the  lowest  stages  of  the  intellectual  life.  These  are 
the  common  stock  of  brute  and  man.  That  the  young  child 
has  only  these,  bridges  the  intellectual  gulf  between  the 
higher  animals  and  man.  Then  comes  the  conceptual 
power,  enabling  man  to  think  in  names,  and  all  the  ranges 


''A  Mere  Manr  21 

through  which  comparison  and  judgment  and  reflection  lead. 
It  is  only  a  bugbear  of  the  intuitionist  that  the  experien- 
tialist  is  limited  to  the  realm  of  sense-perception.  "  The 
tangible  processes,"  says  Tyndall,  "  give  direction  to  the  line 
of  thought ;  but,  this  once  given,  the  length  of  the  line  is  not 
limited  by  the  boundaries  of  the  senses.  Indeed,  the  domain 
of  the  senses  in  nature  is  almost  infinitely  small  in  compari- 
son with  the  vast  region  accessible  to  thought  alone  which 
lies  beyond  them."  Did  Dalton  ever  imagine  he  had  seen 
an  atom  ?  Yet  his  atomic  theory  of  matter  no  less  com- 
mends itself  to  scientific  thought.  Then,  too,  this  mere 
man  of  ours  has  memory,  that  phonograph  which  keeps  the 
record,  sometimes  for  eighty  years,  of  things  impressed  on 
it, —  keeps  the  record  of  thousands  and  millions  of  things; 
that  graphophone  which  gives  them  out  again  in  far-off 
years,  sometimes  the  words,  the  tones,  which  we  would  will- 
ingly forget.  Moreover,  in  our  mere  man  there  is  that  power 
which  we  call  imagination.  It  is  not  creative,  as  in  the  man 
of  genius,  the  artist,  the  novelist,  the  poet ;  but  it  is  receptive. 
It  can  think  their  thoughts  after  them.  They  tell  of  Balzac  that, 
condoling  with  a  friend  on  his  wife's  sickness,  he  said,  "  But, 
to  come  back  to  the  real  world,  how  about '  Euge'nie  Grandet '  ?" 
the  last  novel  he  had  written.  How  real  the  novelist  can 
make  his  world  !  the  poet  his!  All  over  Europe  their  men 
and  women  were  as  real  to  me  as  those  of  the  historians  and 
biographers.  It  was  not  Thackeray,  but  Colonel  Newcome, 
for  whom  I  looked  there  at  the  Charter  House  among  the 
aged  pensioners.  Where  Romola  lived  in  Florence  was  as  vital 
a  question  as  where  Dante  lived  or  Savonarola.  And  our 
mere  man  can  enter  into  all  these  things.  Unable  to  create, 
as  can  the  great  ones  in  this  sphere,  he  can  receive  into  the 
chambers  of  his  imagery  the  long  and  brilliant  train  of  their 
creations  with  a  full  and  thankful  heart. 

How  infinite  in  faculties  this  ordinary  man  !  What  a  fac- 
ulty he  has  for  loving !  what  a  joy  in  being  loved  !  How  he 
can  love  his  parents,  his  brothers  and  sisters,  the  girl  of  his 
free  choice,  his  wife,  his    children  !     How  he  can  love  his 


2  2  ''A  Mere  Man." 

country  and  his  home,  and  the  fields  in  which  his  boyish  feet 
went  wandering,  and  the  homely  sights  made  dear  by  the 
associations  of  his  youth !  How  he  can  sometimes  love 
where  wronged  and  outraged  most  abominably !  How 
women  of  this  humble  sort  remember  those  whom  God 
seems  to  have  forgotten !  How  the  mother's  love  follows 
her  child  on  every  downward  path  !  Though  he  make  his 
bed  in  hell,  she  is  there  to  beat  away  the  flame,  to  slake  his 
torturing  thirst,  to  woo  him  back  to  pure  and  noble  ways. 
What  another  faculty  of  common  men  is  that  called  con- 
science! How  it  holds  the  plainest,  the  most  insignificant, 
as  the  world's  judgments  generally  go,  to  duties  that  are 
immeasurably  hard  !  Not  a  day  goes  by,  and  thousands  and 
ten  thousands  of  these  men  and  women  do  not  deny  them- 
selves as  grandly  as  any  of  the  famous  ones  of  history  and 
art,  put  great  and  threatening  temptations  under  foot  with 
as  supreme  a  self-control.  If  houses  where  great  deeds  are 
done  could  blossom  into  flags,  how  from  the  humblest  as 
from  the  most  magnificent  would  every  day  such  banners 
float  and  stream  ! 

Or  look  at  it  in  another  way.  Consider  what  the  ordinary 
men  are  doing  all  the  time.  See  what  millions  of  acres  they 
are  sowing  and  tending  for  the  world's  food ;  how  they  are 
carrying  the  exchange  of  products  to  and  fro  across  the  con- 
tinents and  sea ;  how  they  are  building  roads  and  cities ; 
how  they  are  taming  the  rude  forces  of  the  world  and  har- 
nessing them  into  the  service  of  their  peace  and  joy.  Or, 
instead  of  the  immediate  aspect,  take  the  continuous.  See 
how,  agreeing  that  God  made  the  world,  man  has  made  it 
over.  Grant  that  the  change  is  not  in  every  case  a  beau- 
teous change.  There  are  thousands  of  acres  in  Brooklyn 
which  must  have  been  as  beautiful  when  Henry  Hudson 
came  to  these  shores  as  they  are  hideous  now.  We  are 
reforming  that  a  little,  and  some  time  we  shall  reform  it 
altogether.  A  city  in  which  every  street  and  every  house 
should  be  beautiful  would  cost  no  more  than  the  vast  areas 
of  ugliness  that  we  have  now.     But  allowing  all  the   change 


''A  Mere  Many  23 

from  good  to  bad,  and  what  a  work  the  average  man  has 
done  upon  the  earth  !  how  vast  the  range  of  his  accomplish- 
ment !  What  institutions,  moreover,  he  has  built  with  all  the 
material  things  ;  if  under  glorious  leadership  sometimes,  con- 
tributing a  glorious  part !  And  of  all  his  workmanship  the 
best  is  still  himself.  He  has  made  over  nothing  else  so  much 
as  man.  From  the  hard  oppositions  of  the  world,  as  he  has 
confronted  them,  as  he  has  braced  himself  against  them, 
he  has  forced  a  crown  which  to  its  iron  adds  ever  costlier 
jewels  as  the  centuries  roll  on.  Historic  man,  though  but 
of  yesterday,  has  traversed  a  much  greater  distance  than  that 
traversed  by  prehistoric  man ;  and  the  distance  made  by 
both  of  these  together  is  not  less  than  that  which  separates 
the  highest  animal  from  the  lowest  man. 

Now,  what  do  these  things  signify, —  this  wonderful  aspect 
of  man's  physical  life,  this  nobility  of  reason  ;  this  infinity  of 
faculties,  love,  conscience,  will ;  this  achievement  of  the  im- 
mediate present  and  the  continuous  past ;  this  world  and 
man  made  over  by  his  patient  strength, —  what  do  they  sig- 
nify, these  things,  if  not  that  the  man  who  is  sufficient  for 
these  things  is  no  "  mere  "  man,  that  no  adjective  of  depre- 
ciation or  contempt  is  suited  to  his  powers  and  his  perform- 
ance ?  What  is  not  "  mere  "  in  earth  or  heaven,  if  man  so 
built  and  facultied  and  of  such  vast  accomplishment  can  be 
so  lightly  set  aside  t  A  mere  man  !  No  :  the  chatter  of  the 
theologians  is  drowned  by  the  antiphony  of  Shakspere  and 
the  Psalmist  of  old  time  :  "What  a  piece  of  work  is  man  ! " 
"  Thou  hast  made  him  little  lower  than  God." 

But,  when  the  theologians  of  the  past  excluded  Jesus 
from  the  human  order,  it  was  not  as  superior  to  the  aver- 
age man.  It  was  as  superior  to  all  possible  humanity. 
And  that  was  right ;  for  Tennyson  has  wisely  sung,  "  The 
highest  is  the  measure  of  the  man."  Add  this  to  all  we 
have  already  seen.  Add  the  great  artists  and  their  pict- 
ures and  their  statues  ;  add  the  great  architects  with  their 
temples  and  cathedrals  and  their  halls  of  civic  pride ;  add 
the  great  poets  and  their  poems  j  add  Homer,  Dante,  Shak- 


24  "^   Mere  Man:' 

spere,  Milton,  Keats,  "him  even,"  Wordsworth,  Shelley, 
and  Browning  with  the  eagle's  feather  on  his  breast,  and 
Tennyson  and  Lowell,  and  the  rest  of  their  great  company. 
—  "  O  Lyric  love,  half-angel  and  half-bird,  and  all  a  wonder 
and  a  wild  desire,"  what  lofty  seat  with  them  is  thine  !  Add 
the  great  men  of  science,  Copernicus  and  Galileo,  Kepler 
and  Newton,  Buffon  and  Linnaeus  and  Cuvier  and  Lamarck 
and  Goethe  and  Lyell  and  Darwin  and  Wallace  ;  add  the 
great  philosophers,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  Leibnitz,  Descartes, 
Kant,  Fichte,  Hegel,  Spencer,  Mill ;  add  the  great  captains 
and  deliverers,  the  great  reformers,  Savonarola,  Luther,  Cob- 
den,  Garrison;  the  great  statesmen,  Burke,  Chatham,  Wash- 
ington, Jefferson,  Lincoln  ;  add  the  great  founders  of  relig- 
ions, Zoroaster,  Buddha,  Confucius,  Mahomet, —  and  why  not 
Jesus,  too  ?  Why  not,  if  all  the  rest  ?  If  all  the  rest  are 
human,  why  not  he  ?  Did  he  surpass  the  highest  of  all  these 
as  much  as  these  surpass  the  lowest  of  their  acknowledged 
kind  ?  And,  if  he  did,  what  reason  for  exclusion  there  ?  But, 
surely,  he  did  not.  It  were  sheer  intellectual  dishonesty  or 
moral  blindness  to  pretend  that  there  is  anything  in  the  New 
Testament  Jesus  differentiating  him  from  Channing, —  for 
example,  intellectually  or  morally,  as  Channing  was  differ- 
entiated by  his  character  and  mind  from  the  bruiser  of  the 
slums,  from  the  cannibal,  from  the  inanity  and  brutality  of 
many  whom  the  social  canons  of  the  first  "  Four  Hundred  " 
do  not  rigidly  exclude. 

A  mere  man  !  Look  at  them  any  way  you  will,  the  words 
are  mutually  inconvertible  and  repellent  particles.  Oil  and 
water  mix  more  easily.  Cold  and  heat  are  less  opposed. 
Darkness  and  light  are  more  agreed.  Good  and  evil  do  not 
so  contend  with  one  another  in  the  womb  of  time.  Whether 
we  take  the  average,  generic  man  in  the  scope  of  his  physi- 
cal immensity,  and  the  range  of  his  intellectual  faculties,  and 
the  sweep  of  his  affections,  and  the  contrasting  heights  and 
depths  of  his  moral  nature,  his  struggle  with  temptation,  his 
triumph  over  sin, —  these  things  alone  or,  in  addition,  as  we 
rightly  may,  the  exceptional  splendor  of  the  world's  greatest 


''A  Mere  Manr  25 

and  most  gifted  souls,  it  does  not  matter  much.  The  word 
"  mere  "  has  so  little  coherency  with  the  first  order  of  ideas, 
it  is  so  utterly  incongruous  and  absurd  applied  to  them,  that 
hardly  can  it  be  more  so  when  the  vision  and  report  are  ex- 
tended to  all  those  whose  names,  in  science  or  in  art,  in 
literature  or  religion,  in  government  or  reform,  have  shed 
the  brightest  lustre  on  the  fame  and  fortune  of  mankind. 
Once  let  a  man  appreciate  the  dignity  and  glory  of  human- 
ity as  they  are  revealed  by  history  and  science,  by  philoso- 
phy and  art,  by  ethics  and  religion,  and  he  will  know  that  he 
could  not  show  any  great  one,  though  it  were  him  whom 
millions  have  identified  with  God,  a  more  conspicuous  dis- 
honor than  to  exclude  him  from  the  glorious  company  of  the 
weak  and  strong,  the  famous  and  unfamed,  the  ignorant  and 
wise,  the  evil  and  the  good,  who  are  necessary  all  to  each, 
in  the  wholeness  of  a  complete  humanity.  And  he  whose 
favorite  name,  self-chosen,  was  the  "  Son  of  Man,"  would  be 
the  last  to  wish  or  hope  or  dream  of  any  glory  for  himself  in 
which  the  humblest  might  not  freely  share. 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  ACHIEVEMENTS 
OF  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM.* 


When  some  clerical  Presbyterian  objected  to  Dr.  Briggs's 
plea  for  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Bible,  "  That  he  or  any 
one  should  presume  to  criticise  the  word  of  God !  "  he  not 
only  begged  the  question  in  debate,  but  put  himself  in  evi- 
dence that  the  vulgar  idea  of  criticism  as  something  merely 
negative  and  depreciatory  infects  a  good  many  persons  for 
whom  such  a  mistake  should  be  impossible.  To  say  a  favor- 
able criticism  is  for  such  a  contradiction  in  terms.  And 
even  for  those  who  know  that  criticism  is  simply  judgment 
and  appreciation,  Biblical  criticism  is  often  so  much  finding 
fault, —  a  process  of  tearing  down  and  pulling  to  pieces,  to 
which  no  constructive  process  corresponds.  Such  a  concep- 
tion certainly  implies  the  grossest  ignorance  of  the  course  of 
Biblical  criticism  and  the  results  it  has  so  far  attained,  but 
that  much  of  this  course  has  had  a  negative  character  is  not 
to  be  denied.  Why  should  it  be  ?  There  is  nothing  in  the 
allowance  that  requires  apology.  To  find  that  certain  things 
are  not  as  they  have  been  supposed  to  be  is  a  good  step 
towards  knowing  what  they  really  are.  And  no  maxim  has 
been  more  injurious  than  that  which  formulates  the  absurd- 
ity that  we  should  destroy  nothing  till  we  had  something  as 
good  to  put  in  its  place.  The  incapacity  for  intellectual  sus- 
pense has  been  the  fruitful  mother  of  a  brood  of  feeble  no- 
tions  and  hypotheses,   having  neither  the    promise   of  this 

*  A  paper  read  at  the  Seventh  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Conference  of  the  Middle 
States  and  Canada,  held  in  the  Lenox  Avenue  Unitarian  Church,  New  York,  November 
lo;  in  Brooklyn,  November  14;  in  Boston  before  the  Unitarian  Sunday  School  Union, 
in  Channing  Hall,  Dec.  7,  1891. 


28  The  Cojistructive  Achievements 

world   nor  of  that  which  is  to  come.     "  He   that  believeth 
shall  not  make  haste,"  nor  he  that  would  believe  in  the  abid- 
ing truth.     A  humble  willingness  to  wait  awhile,  to  go  out 
like  the  patriarch    not  knowing  whither,  and    not    insisting 
that  we  shall  know  before  we  budge  an  inch,  is  the  prime 
condition  on  \vhich  Truth  reveals  herself  to  earnest  minds. 
The  temper  of  the  pious  objector  of  our  day  is  too  often  that 
of  the  country  parish  which  wanted  a  meeting-house  built  on 
the  exact  site  of  the  old  one,  the  old  one  not  to  be  disturbed 
until  the  new  one  was  completely  finished.     The  temple  of 
religious  truth  is  not  going  to  be  utterly  demolished,  but  cer- 
tain alterations  have  got  to  be  made,  if  it  is  going  to  stand 
the  brunt  of  wind  and  weather ;  and   they  cannot  be  made 
without  a  good    deal    of   demolition.     When  they  tried    to 
patch  the   central   tower    of   Chichester   Cathedral,  it  came 
down  with   a  rush,  and   so  filled  up  the  church  inside  that 
there  was  no  room  for  the  worshippers.     A  good  deal  of  crit- 
ical   patching  in   our  churches  bids  for  a  like   result,   and 
arsrues  that  a  more  heroic  method  would  be  better  in  the 
end.     It  cannot  be  too  clearly  understood  that  a  new  par- 
ticular affirmation,  corresponding  to  every  one  that  criticism 
sets  aside,  is  not  to  be  had,  and  the  demand  for  it  is  irra- 
tional and  absurd.     To  ask  triumphantly,  "  If  Moses  didn't 
write  the  Pentateuch,  who  did  "  ?  or  "  If  John  didn't  write 
the   Fourth  Gospel,   who   did  "  ?  is    an  exact  equivalent    of 
Mark  Twain's  reasoning  with  respect  to  Adam's  grave :  "If 
it  wasn't  Adam's  grave,  whose  was  it  ?  "     The  later  criticism 
of  the  Bible  has  opposed  a  hundred  sheer  negations  to  tra- 
ditional opinion,  which,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  has 
not  been  able  to  make  good  with  corresponding  affirmations. 
Its  denials  of  the  authorship  of  various  books  to  various  per- 
sons have  all  this  character.     The  attempts  to  follow  up  the 
denial  with  a  new  affirmation  have  all  been  vain,  and  this  is 
precisely  what  we  should  expect. 

But  this  also  should  be  borne  in  mind,  that  the  negations 
of  criticism  for  the  most  part  are  negations  of  traditional 
opinions  about  the  Bible,  not  of  its  own  affirmations.     The 


of  the  Higher  Criticism.  29 

titles  of  the  books  in  either  Testament  are  merely  records  of 
traditional  opinions  in  the  main,  not  parts  of  the  books  them- 
selves. But  the  negations  which  criticism  has  opposed  to 
many  things,  as  to  verbal  or  to  plenary  inspiration,  have  no 
Bible  warrant,  not  even  that  of  the  titles,  or  the  glosses  of 
the  chapter  headings  and  the  running  titles,  which  have  per- 
verted judgment  to  an  incalculable  degree.  I  know  a  Uni- 
tarian minister  who  says  :  "  I  don't  care  a  rap  for  your  criti- 
cism. I  propose  to  take  the  Bible  at  its  face  value."  But 
its  face  value  is  like  that  of  the  enamelled  women  whom  we 
sometimes  meet  upon  the  street.  It  has  been  painted  an 
inch  thick  with  the  glosses  of  the  theologians.  "  To  this 
day,"  said  Paul,  "  there  remaineth  a  veil  in  the  reading  of  the 
Old  Testament."  He  said  that  it  was  done  away  in  Christ. 
Is  it  not  rather  true  that  it  has  been  remade  thicker  by  the 
Christian  centuries  than  it  ever  was  before,  and  that  the 
New  Testament  has  undergone  a  similar  disguise  and  trans- 
formation ?  Nine-tenths  of  the  negation  of  the  modern  critic 
is  negation  of  the  glosses  of  interpreters  and  theologians  that 
have  come  in  between  the  Bible  and  men's  eyes,  and  spoiled 
for  them  its  actual  proportions  and  obscured  its  glorious 
beauty. 

By  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Bible  is  meant,  or  should 
be  meant,  that  criticism  which  is  not  merely  explanatory  of 
the  text,  either  with  reference  to  bringing  out  its  meaning  or 
to  economizing  its  moral  and  religious  helps,  and  which  is 
still  less  the  subjection  of  the  Bible  to  the  necessities  of  par- 
ticular systems  of  theology,  of  which  we  have  had  a  great 
abundance  all  the  centuries  down.  The  Higher  Criticism  is 
an  attempt  to  view  the  different  parts  of  the  Bible  in  a  large 
and  general  way,  to  discover  when  the  different  books  were 
written,  and,  if  possible,  by  whom  they  were  written,  though 
this  particular  is  of  much  less  importance  than  the  other ; 
and  yet,  further,  their  relations  to  their  separate  times, —  how 
they  were  influenced  by  these,  and  what  influence  they  had 
upon  them,  if  haply  in  this  way  the  line  of  evolution  may  be 
traced   from    the  beginning  to  the  end  of  that  millennium 


30  The  Constructive  Achievements 

which  roughly  synchronized  with  the  literary  creation  of  the 
Bible  from  its  earliest  to  its  latest  part, —  from  the  ninth  cen- 
tury B.C.  to  the  second  after  and  inclusive.  Within  the  limits 
of  this  criticism  there  is  room  for  copious  exegesis  ;  for  Tho- 
reau's  trout  in  the  milk  is  no  better  circumstantial  evidence 
than  is  many  a  text  whereby  there  hangs  a  tale,  though  it 
must  always  be  remembered  that,  as  the  trout  may  have  been 
dropped  into  the  milk-pan  in  the  buttery,  so  may  the  special 
text  have  been  the  after-thought  of  some  redactor  or  the  in- 
trusion of  some  careless  scribe.  When  all  has  been  done 
that  can  be  done,  the  external  and  the  internal  evidences 
sifted,  the  language  and  the  style  of  different  books  com- 
pared, the  parts  of  each  that  are  not  homogeneous  differen- 
tiated by  these  and  other  tests,  there  must  remain  around 
the  circle  of  our  definite  knowledge  a  photosphere  of  vague, 
uncertain  light  that  seems  to  come  and  go.  But  this  photo- 
sphere, which  is  the  scorn  of  dogmatists  and  the  despair  of 
those  whom  the  dead  certainties  of  an  earlier  stage  have  cor- 
rupted with  a  passion  for  others  equally  defunct,  is,  perhaps, 
one  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  of  the  Higher  Criti- 
cism to  our  treasury  of  spiritual  gains.  It  keeps  the  schol- 
ars still  at  work,  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope  for  some 
more  definite  result.  It  nourishes  a  wholesome  sense  of  in- 
completeness and  uncertainty  in  the  teachers  and  the  taught, 
like  that  which  Cromwell  tried  vainly  to  encourage  when  he 
said  to  the  Westminster  divines,  "  I  beseech  you,  by  the  bow- 
els of  the  Lord,  to  consider  it  possible  that  you  may  be  mis- 
taken." 

The  method  of  Dogmatic  Criticism  was  to  begin  with  the 
most  secret  counsels  of  the  Trinity  and  go  searching  through 
the  Bible  for  some  confirmation  of  those  imaginary  things. 
The  method  of  the  Higher  Criticism  is  to  begin  with  what  is 
most  surely  known,  and  slowly  and  cautiously  to  work  out 
its  way  from  that  into  the  adjacent  region  and  then  into 
the  regions  more  and  more  remote.  The  most  obvious  out- 
come of  this  process  is  the  negation  and  destruction  of  a 
great  many  traditional  conceptions  and  the   introduction  of 


of  the  Higher  Criticism.  31 

an   element  of  uncertainty  into  a  great  many  more.     Tak- 
ing the  Old  Testament  books  in  their  traditional  order,  we 
are    informed    that    Moses    did    not    write    the    Pentateuch, 
nor  Joshua  the  book  that  bears  his    name,  nor    David   the 
Psalms  ascribed   to   him, —  or,   if    any,   very  few, —  that    no 
more    did    Solomon  write    the   Proverbs  or    Ecclesiastes  or 
the  Song  of  Songs,  that  Isaiah,  the  eighth-century  prophet, 
wrote  onlv  a  little  more  than  half  of  the  book  that  bears  his 
name,  Jeremiah  less  than  the  whole  of  his  by  the  three  clos- 
ing  chapters    and    no    part    of    Lamentations,    Daniel,     the 
prophet  of  the  captivity,  no  word  of  the  prophecy  ascribed  to 
him,  Zechariah  a  part   only  of  the   book  called    after   him. 
With    these    negations  of  traditional  authorship  in   the  Old 
Testament,  there  have  been  as  many,  if  not  more,  of  dates 
traditionally  assigned,  as   of  the  Pentateuch  to  the  fifteenth 
century  B.C.,  and  Job  to  a  much  earlier  time,  of  the  Psalms  to 
David's  and  the  time  immediately  succeeding,  of  the  books 
ascribed  to  Solomon  to  his  time,  Daniel  to  the  later  time  of  the 
captivity,  and  so  on.     There  has  been  a  movement  forward 
all  along  the  line,  but  a  few  centuries  here,  and  many  there. 
To  go  into  particulars  would  be  to  pass  from  the  negative 
to  the  positive  aspect  of  the  matter,  and  I  wish  to  give  the 
negative  at  first  full  force.     With  the  New  Testament  it  is 
much  the  same  as  with  the  Old.     There,  also,  the  movement 
forward  of  the  various  books  from  their  traditional  anchorage 
has   been   strongly   marked,   though    not  without  occasional 
recession.     It  has  carried  the  Synoptic  Gospels  to  the  last 
quarter  of  the  first  century,  and  Luke,  perhaps,  beyond  ;  the 
Fourth  Gospel  to  the  second  quarter  of  the  second  century ; 
Acts,  also,  forward  ;  the   pastoral  Epistles  (to  Timothy  and 
Titus)  to  a  much  later  time  than  Paul's,  that  to  the  Ephe- 
sians   also   to    a   somewhat  later ;  the    Epistles    ascribed   to 
Peter  from    twenty-five    to   one   hundred  years    beyond    his 
death.     With  these  changes  of  New  Testament  dates,  there 
have  been  as  many  changes  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  differ- 
ent books.     The  degrees  of  certainty  attaching  to  the  critical 
judgments    here  are  almost  as  various  as  the  books.     The 


32  The  Constructive  AcJiievemcnts 

maximum  of  certainty  is""  with  regard  to  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  that  Paul  did  not  write  it.  That  he  did  not  write 
Second  Thessalonians,  the  Epistles  to  Timothy  and  Titus, 
and  that  to  the  Ephesians,  is  less  generally  agreed  ;  also,  that 
John  did  not  write  the  Apocalypse,  nor  Peter  and  John  the 
Epistles  ascribed  to  them.  That  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  as 
we  have  them,  were  not  written  by  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke 
is  well  established,  as  it  is  also,  we  may  now  say  with  con- 
fidence, that  the  Fourth  Gospel  cannot  be  considered  John's, 
the  conservative  critics  allowing  this,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, as  fully,  if  not  as  frankly,  as  the  more  liberal  can 
desire  in  confirmation  of  their  own  amended  view. 

If  these  results  were  all  the  Higher  Criticism  had  to  show, 
its    negative    aspect  would  certainly  deserve  the  contumely 
which   its    more    violent    opponents    have    heaped    upon  it, 
and    the    indifference    and   distrust   of     all    whose    spiritual 
appetite    craves    something    more   substantial    than    a    mere 
'  Barmecide  feast  of  empty  names  and  dates.     But  in  being 
emptied  of  the  honors  which  they  once  held,  these   names 
have  gained  as  much  as  they  have  lost ;  and  a  true  date  is  as 
good  as  a  false  one  for  any  book  or  circumstance,  however 
good  or  bad.     Moreover,  one  must  be  very  dull  who  cannot 
see  that  the  negations  of  the   Higher  Criticism  are  not  so 
barren   as   they    might   be    by    a   great    deal.     They   are    a 
notation  by  which   very  real  values    are    expressed.     They 
carry  in  their  train  a  host  of  positive  results,  as  much  more 
rich    and   full    than    their   unqualified  simplicity  as  are  the 
movements  of   the  heavens  than  the  algebraic  x  by  which 
their  unknown  quantities  may  be  expressed.     The  main  in- 
terest of  Old  Testament  criticism,  for  example,  has  centred 
in    the    Pentateuch.     Now,    what    proportion    to  the  results 
attained  in  this  department  is  borne  by  the  mere  negation 
of  the  authorship  of  Moses  ?     Is  it  one  to  a  thousand  or  one 
to  a  million  ?     And  yet  the  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch  has 
been  destructive  of  much  more  than  the  Mosaic  authorship. 
It  has  destroyed  the  unity  of  its  composition.     It  has  made 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy  a  book  by  itself,  dating  from  the 


of  tJie  HigJier  Criticism.  33 

closing  years  of  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  when  Moses  had 
been  dead  some  seven  hundred  years.  The  four  preceding 
books  it  has  disintegrated  into  the  Book  of  Covenants,  an 
Elohistic  and  a  Jehovistic  document,  another  fusing  these,  a 
priestly  code  containing  nearly  all  the  priestly  regulations 
of  Exodus  and  Numbers  and  Leviticus,  which  was  not  fairly 
published  till  Moses  had  been  dead  nearly  nine  centuries, 
and  certain  interesting  fragments  antecedent  to  all  these. 
This  is  destructive  criticism,  certainly  ;  but  it  is  the  same 
kind  of  destruction  that  goes  on  when  a  pile  of  bricks  and 
lumber,  most  solid  and  symmetrical,  is  made  into  a  house 
which  guards  a  living  home.  If  we  could  have  the  Pen- 
tateuch (the  Five-fold  Book),  which  has  become  the  Hexa- 
teuch  (the  Six-fold  Book)  by  the  addition  of  Joshua,  ar- 
ranged for  ordinary  reading,  as  it  has  been  in  the  ideal 
constructions  of  Kuenen,  Smith,  and  Driver,  and  their  kind, 
it  would  have  all  the  advantage  over  the  present  arrange- 
ment that  a  noble  building  has  over  the  raw  materials  from 
which  it  is  made.  Thanks  to  the  constructive  achieve- 
ments of  the  Higher  Criticism  here,  a  unity  that  was  merely 
formal  and  mechanical  has  become  vital  and  organic.  Every 
separate  part  is  vitally  related  to  some  stage  of  Israel's 
growth  in  spiritual  things.  It  reflects  a  changing  civiliza- 
tion, a  deeper  ethical  and  religious  consciousness,  as  we  pass 
from  the  "Ten  Commandments,"  all  that  we  have  from 
Moses'  mighty  heart,  to  the  "  Book  of  Covenants  "  (Exodus 
xxi.-xxiii.  19),  from  that  to  the  Prophetic  Narratives  of 
the  Jehovistic  document,  the  story-book  of  which  we  never 
tire,  from  that  to  the  Elohistic  document,  to  the  fusion  of 
this  with  the  former,  to  Deuteronomy  (620  B.C.)  and  the 
Deuteronomic  revision,  and  finally  to  the  Priests'  Code,  and 
the  grand  fusion  of  this  with  the  rest  and  the  redaction  of  the 
whole  which  brought  the  Pentateuch  and  Joshua  into  their 
present  shape.  Nor  do  the  constructive  achievements  of 
the  Higher  Criticism  end  with  this  rearrangement  of  the 
Hexateuch  even  so  far  as  the  Hexateuch  is  itself  concerned. 
The  order  thus  discovered  is  an  order  like  to  that  of  a  great 


34  TJie  Constructive  Achievements 

army,  which,  as  it  goes  marching  on,  sweeps  up  into  its  files 
the  wavering  swarms  of  national  allies  and  border  States, 
and  makes  them  energetic  and  consenting  parts  of  its  own 
unitary  force  and  might.  The  rearrangement  of  the  Hex- 
ateuch,  far  from  ending  with  itself,  furnishes  a  unifying 
principle  of  Old  Testament  relations,  which  brings  the  books 
of  Samuel  and  Kings  and  Chronicles,  the  prophets  in  their 
chronologic  order,  the  Psalms  and  other  books,  into  harmo- 
nious alliance  with  the  Hexateuch,  corresponding  with  and 
illustrating  one  part  after  another  of  its  composite  unity. 
Thus  it  appears  that  the  books  of  Samuel  and  Kings  fall 
into  line  with  those  eighth  and  seventh  century  portions  of 
the  Pentateuch  which  are  strongly  marked  with  the  prophetic 
spirit,  the  prophets  Amos  and  Hosea,  Isaiah  and  Micah,  at 
the  same  time  into  the  same  place.  Not  without  critical  in- 
sight did  the  Jews  name  the  books  of  Samuel  and  Kings 
"  the  Early  Prophets,"  so  strong  in  them  is  the  spirit  of  the 
early  prophets.  But  Jeremiah's  place  is  with  the  Deuterono- 
mist,  part  prophet  and  part  priest,  and  doing  his  best  to 
reconcile  the  discordant  elements ;  while  Ezekiel's  prophecy 
foretold  nothing  else  so  clearly  as  the  priestly  tendency 
which  culminated  in  the  priestly  portions  of  the  Pentateuch 
after  the  return  from  Babylon,  where  they  had  been  worked 
out,  not  without  much  ingenious  and  affectionate  inclusion  of 
such  ritual  forms  as  had  been  generally  in  use  or  had  fallen 
into  innocuous  desuetude  in  the  hurly-burly  of  invasion  and 
expatriation.  The  Psalmists,  equally  with  the  prophets, 
bring  their  glory  and  honor  into  the  Hexateuchal  evolution. 
In  lack  of  all  external  evidence  for  the  authorship  of  the 
Psalms,  our  best  means  for  determining  their  chronology 
is  their  relation  to  that  evolution.  Those  that  are  most 
prophetic  we  can,  with  a  good  deal  of  confidence,  assign  to 
the  prophetic  centuries  which  produced  the  early  prophets, 
the  prophetic  narratives  and  histories  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
Samuel  and  Kings  ;  those  having  the  temper  of  Jeremiah 
and  the  Deuteronomist  to  their  time  ;  those  of  a  priestly 
cast  to  post-exilic  times,  and  there  the  most  of  them  belong. 


of  tJie  Higher  Criticism.  35 

It  is  a  little  matter  to  thus  determine  their  chronology.  It 
is  not  a  little  matter  that  by  this  determination  they  become 
to  us  the  voice  of  a  great  congregation,  and  not  merely  the 
unreal  pietism  of  an  irreligious  and  immoral  king.  It  is  not 
a  little  matter  that  to  the  priests,  whom  we  have  habitually 
despised  in  comparison  with  the  prophets,  we  are  most  in- 
debted for  those  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  which  have 
made  it  precious  to  innumerable  hearts.  To  the  same 
priests  we  owe  the  books  of  Chronicles  and  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah, —  as  history  prejudiced  and  imperfect,  but  as 
memoirs  of  their  time  most  serviceable  to  its  historians  now. 
These  books  are  on  the  best  of  terms  with  the  priestly  por- 
tions and  the  last  redaction  of  the  Hexateuch,  as  are  also 
the  prophecies  of  Zechariah  (i.-viii.)  and  Malachi,  while 
the  books  of  Jonah  and  Ruth  are  in  spirited  rebellion 
against  the  narrow  and  exclusive  policy  of  those  who  would 
shut  Israel  up  in  selfish  isolation. 

In  this  progressive  relationship  of  so  many  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  to  the  evolution  of  the  Hexateuch,  we  have  a 
constructive  achievement  even  greater  than  the  rearrange- 
ment of  the  Hexateuch.  It  substitutes  for  a  purely  mechan- 
ical and  irrational  sequence  such  a  relation  and  connection 
that  we  can  say 

"  Mark  how  one  string,  sweet  husband  to  another, 
Strikes  each  in  each  by  mutual  ordering." 

Immeasurable  the  gain  of  every  part  in  interest,  in  vital- 
ity, in  historical  and  spiritual  significance,  because  of  this 
living  spirit  of  the  Hexateuchal  evolution  in  the  midst  of  the 
revolving  wheels  of  various  motive,  passion,  ardor,  exalta- 
tion. And  there  are  many  incidental  gains  which  are  of 
great  importance.  Could  we  believe  that  God  was  ever  such 
a  one  as  the  Deuteronomist  declares  him  to  have  been,  might 
we  not  well  say,  like  Prometheus :  *'  I  reverence  Thee  ? 
Wherefore  t  "  But  even  so  wise  a  scholar  as  Canon  Driver, 
whose  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament  Professor  Briggs 
has  just  sent  forth  among  us,  tells  us  that  neither  the  in- 
spiration nor  authority  of  the  Old  Testament  is  affected  by 


36  The  Coitstnictive  Achievements 

the  criticism  I  have  described,  and  which  he,  orthodox  and 
conservative,  accepts  almost  entire.     But  it  is  certain    that 
the  makers  of  the  Pentateuch,  as  we  have  it,  did  not  accord 
to  it  a  special  inspiration  and  authority.     Speaking  of  the 
eighth-century  fusion   of   different    documents,  Renan    says, 
"  It  is  not  possible  to  hack  about  so  freely  a  text  admitted 
to  be  inspired."     Of  the  more  elaborate  fusion  of  the  fifth 
century  the  same  holds  good.     The  belief  in  special  inspira- 
tion and  authority  was  the  production  of  a  later  time,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  the  process  of  its  growth  that  commends 
it  to  an  intelligent  mind,  nor  to  any  one  who  is  not  bound  to 
stultify  himself  at  any  cost.     But  it  is  not  only  the  character 
of  God  that  is  redeemed  by  the   criticism  of  Deuteronomy : 
it  is  also  the  character  of  the  Hebrew  people,  whose  slaugh- 
ter of  the   Canaanites,  for  which  such   miserable  apologies 
have  been  made  and  which  has  often  furnished  terrible  in- 
structions   to    fanatical    religionists,    this    criticism    has    re- 
manded to  an  ideal  sphere.     It  was  a  fancy  picture,  painted 
to  encourage  an  exclusive   and    intolerant  spirit,  which  for 
a  time  it  did,  and  then  followed  a  reaction.     Another  inci- 
dental gain  is  in  the  matter  of  Isaiah.     The  criticism  which 
makes  chapters  xl.-lxvi.  a  separate  prophecy,  two  centuries 
later   than  the  rest,  leaves  to   the    prophet    Isaiah    all    that 
he    needs   for   his    imperishable   fame.       The    whole   would 
be  too  much.     The  later  portion  gives  us  another  prophet 
of   equal,   if   not   greater,   power;    and,   as    a   voice   of   the 
Captivity,  it  acquires  a  pathos  and  a  passion  which  it  could 
not  have  in  its  old  place.     The  book  of  Daniel  makes  a  sim- 
ilar gain  by  its  transference  from  the  sixth  century  B.C.  to 
the  second,  where  it  becomes  the  expression  of  that  passion 
of  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  which 
raised  the  standard  of  the  heroic  Maccabees,  and  carried  it 
to  victory.     Is  it  not  a  very  real  gain  to  the  Psalms  that  even 
a  criticism  so  conservative  as  that  of  Canon  Driver  cannot 
confidently  ascribe  to  David  a  single  Psalm  ?     Would  it  help 
the   Book  of  Common    Prayer    to   know   that  Henry  VIII., 
the  much-married,  the  cruel,  the  murderous,  had  written  half 


of  the  Higher  Criticism.  37 

of  it  ?  Had  he  been  its  reputed  author,  would  it  not  help  it 
to  discover  that  he  had  no  part  in  it,  to  be  forever  rid  of 
that  evil  association,  soiling  at  every  touch  ?  David,  take 
him  all  around  and  with  due  allowance  for  his  time,  was  not 
a  better  man  or  king  than  Henry  VHI.;  and  the  criticism 
which  denies  the  Psalms  to  his  traditional  claim  does  them 
a  real  service.     As  much  as  ever  they  contain 

"Words  that  have  drunk  transcendent  meanings  up 
From  the  best  passion  of  all  bygone  time, 
Steeped  through  with  tears  of  triumph  and  remorse, 
Sweet  with  all  sainthood,  cleansed  with  martyr  fires," 

though  not  unmixed  wdth  baser  elements,  to  which  David 
would  be  welcome  if  they  were  his  by  critical  right.  Hence- 
forth they  are  the  spiritual  autobiography  of  Israel  for  eight 
hundred  years,  with  here  and  there  an  accent  so  purely  per- 
sonal that  we  feel  as  if  we  ought  to  veil  our  faces  from  the 
contrition  and  the  agony  of  a  troubled  soul.  As  the  name 
of  David  attracted  to  itself  the  hymns  and  spiritual  songs  of 
Israel,  so  the  name  of  Solomon  attracted  its  proverbial  wis- 
dom, and  perhaps  the  name  of  Job  the  long  debate  concern- 
ing the  misfortunes  and  the  sufferings  of  righteous  men. 
In  either  case  the  gain  is  large  which  makes  the  individual 
wither,  while  the  race  is  more  and  more.  In  the  case  of  Job 
it  sounds  a  truce  to  all  the  vain  attempts  to  reconcile  the 
speech  of  Elihu  and  the  Epilogue  with  the  remaining  parts. 
How  grandly,  too,  the  Higher  Criticism  has  rescued  the 
book  of  Jonah  and  the  Song  of  Songs  from  the  contempt  of 
the  vulgar  and  the  qualms  of  prurient  prudes,  and  no  less 
from  the  stuff  and  nonsense  of  the  allegorical  interpretation, 
and  set  them  both  on  high  as  worthy  of  all  honor,  the  one 
for  its  catholic  sympathy  with  alien  peoples,  and  the  other 
for  its  praise  of  simple,  faithful  love,  so  radiantly  beautiful 
and  so  passionately  pure  ! 

But  these  incidental  gains  must  not  detain  us  from  that 
larger  synthesis  which  is  involved  in  the  literary  evolution 
of  the  Hexateuch  and  the  books  that  answer  to  the  succes- 


38  The  Consti'iLctive  Achievements 

sive  stages  of  its  growth.  The  constructive  achievement, 
par  excellence^  of  the  Higher  Criticism  within  the  Old  Testa- 
ment limits  is  the  history  of  a  national  religious  evolution 
from  the  deification  of  natural  objects,  trees,  and  stones  to 
the  worship  of  one  God,  not  of  and  for  Israel  alone,  but  of 
the  universe,  and,  if  through  Israel, y^r  all  mankind.  From 
an  original  fetich  worship,  safely  conjectured  from  the  sur- 
vivals of  a  later  time,  Israel  in  Egypt  went  forward  to  the 
worship  of  great  natural  forms  and  forces,  and  principally  of 
a  dreadful  god  of  fire,  much  like  the  Ammonitish  Molech 
and  the  Moabitish  Chemosh,  whose  worship  was  with  human 
sacrifices  and  other  cruel  rites.  This  god  would  seem  to 
have  been  worshipped  under  different  names,  one  of  them 
Yahweh  j  or  there  were  different  gods  from  which  the  one 
so  named  came  uppermost  in  time.  "  Moses  His  Choice," 
was  the  title  of  an  ancient  book  in  which  I  used  to  read  to 
please  my  grandmother,  and  did  not  please  myself.  I  have 
forgotten  everything  except  the  title;  but  the  history  we  are 
considering  teaches  us  that  his  choice  was  Yahweh,  perhaps 
because  he  was  his  tribal  god.  The  name  mattered  little. 
What  did  matter  was  that  he  connected  his  worship  with 
morality  in  the  Ten  Commandments, —  not  as  we  have  them 
now,  for  Moses  was  no  monotheist  and  did  not  object  to  the 
idolatrous  worship  of  Yahweh.  From  his  time  to  Hosea's, 
five  hundred  years,  Monolatry,  the  worship  of  one  god,  with- 
out denying  the  existence  or  the  power  of  other  gods,  was 
Israel's  loftiest  ideal,  too  lofty  for  habitual  realization. 
The  worship  of  other  gods  with  him  was  commoner  than  the 
exclusive  worship  of  Yahweh.  Witness  the  Baal  worship  of 
the  Northern  tribes,  and  the  motley  worship  of  Solomon, 
Ahaz,  and  Manasseh.  In  the  eighth  century  B.C.  Israel  for 
the  first  time,  under  the  leadership  of  such  great  prophets  as 
Isaiah  and  Micah,  arrived  at  the  purely  monotheistic  idea, 
that  there  was  only  one  God,  that  he  was  the  creator  of  the 
universe,  that  he  was  to  be  worshipped  without  any  image, 
that  he  was  a  righteous  God,  and  was  best  worshipped  with 
the  sacrifices  of  righteousness.     Only  a  small  minority  were 


of  iJie  Higher  Criticism.  39 

ready  for  so  high  a  truth.  A  century  later  there  was  a  com- 
promise, the  details  of  which  are  found  in  the  book  of  Deu- 
teronomy. It  was  substantially  that  the  true  worship  of 
Yahweh  consisted  of  sacrifices  and  righteousness.  Only  the 
sacrifices  must  be  offered  in  Jerusalem,  and  there  only.  The 
violent  revolution  by  which  this  compromise  was  forced  upon 
the  nation  was  soon  followed  by  the  Captivity,  a  period  of 
intense  literary  and  religious  activity,  whose  most  signal 
fruit  was  the  Priests'  Code,  the  levitical  law  of  Numbers  and 
Leviticus.  Not  amid  the  thunders  of  Sinai,  but  amid  the 
thunders  of  Babylon,  was  the  law  delivered;  and  not  to 
Moses,  but  to  some  daring  innovator,  whose  fame  would  have 
been  fatal  to  his  work.  The  compromise  of  Deuteronomy 
had  come  full  circle.  There  the  priests  had  the  best  of  it : 
here  they  had  everything  their  own  way.  But  the  religious 
evolution  still  went  on.  A  loftier  spirituality,  a  more  inward 
righteousness,  is  witnessed  by  the  later  Psalms  and  other 
writings  of  the  centuries  that  bring  us  forward  to  the  thresh- 
old of  the  Christian  era. 

This  meagre  outline  is  almost  a  travesty  of  that  history  of 
Israel's  religious  evolution  which  the  Higher  Criticism  has 
achieved.  Can  these  dry  bones  live .''  They  can  and  do 
under  the  great  master  critics'  magic  spell.  They  are  clothed 
with  palpitating  flesh.  Their  blood  is  warm  with  human 
love  and  hate  and  hope  and  fear  and  joy.  And  the  history 
so  made  alive,  as  compared  with  the  mechanical,  traditional 
scheme  of  Israel's  general  decadence  from,  and  spasmodic 
efforts  to  regain,  the  heights  of  an  original  revelation  is  full 
of  a  superb  reality  and  an  incalculable  interest  and  inspira- 
tion. 

In  the  traditional  chronology  of  the  Bible  there  is  a  gulf 
of  four  hundred  and  fifty  years  between  the  last  chapters  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  first  chapters  of  the  New.  One 
of  the  most  significant  achievements  of  the  Higher  Criticism 
has  been  to  bridge  this  gulf,  partly  with  material  brought 
forward  from  the  Old  Testament,  partly  with  material  taken 
from  the  Apocrypha,  in  many  instances  approving  the  wis- 


40  The  Constructive  AcJiievements 

dom  of  the  Roman  Church  in  making  it  canonical,  and 
partly  with  material  from  sources  wholly  external  to  the 
Bible  and  Apocrypha,  that  it  might  be  fulfilled  as  it  was 
written  by  the  poet :  — 

"Filled  up  as  'twere  the  gaps  of  centuries, 
Leaving  that  beautiful  which  had  been  so, 
And  making  that  which  was  not,  till  the  place 
Became  religion,  and  the  heart  ran  o'er 
With  silent  worship  of  the  great  of  old, 
The  dead  but  sceptred  sovereigns,  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns." 

The  beauty  of  this  passage  has  not  tempted  me  to  an  unlaw- 
ful use  of  it.  It  expresses  just  exactly  what  the  Higher  Crit- 
icism has  done  for  the  centuries  between  Malachi  and  Mat- 
thew. These  centuries,  which  have  been  generally  regarded 
as  centuries  of  decadence,  and  of  that  only,  it  has  shown  to 
have  been  a  period  of  religious  growth,  of  deepening  spirit- 
uality, of  ever-heightening  anticipation  of  "the  mind  that  was 
in  Christ."  Increasing  formalism  there  was  no  doubt,  but 
increasing  inwardness  and  spirituality  even  more  notably. 
One  incident  of  this  fresh  reading  of  the  last  pre-Christian 
centuries  has  been  that  certain  books  of  the  Apocrypha 
have  been  shown  to  be  much  more  inspired  than  some  which 
the  Old  Testament  includes,  if,  indeed,  the  most  inspired  is 
that  which  is  the  most  inspiring. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  in  many  instances  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  Higher  Criticism  have  not  dealt  with  the  New 
Testament  with  the  same  sincerity  and  courage  they  have 
manifested  in  their  dealings  with  the  Old.  "  The  reason  is 
of  course  obvious,"  says  one  of  the  authors  of  "Lux  Mundi." 
"  Why,  what  can  be  admitted  in  the  Old  Testament  could 
not,  without  results  disastrous  to  the  Christian  creed,  be  ad- 
mitted in  the  New."  To  some  it  is  by  no  means  obvious, 
for  it  has  been  given  them  to  see  that  the  value  of  evidence 
is  not  affected  by  the  magnitude  of  the  issues  at  stake. 
Whatever  happens  to  the  Christian  creed,  the  Higher  Criti- 


of  tJie  Higher  Criticism.  41 

cism  has  but  one  method  for  the  Old  Testament  and  New ; 
and,  forsaking  this,  it  becomes  the  lower  criticism^ —  not  criti- 
cism at  all  in  fact,  but  mere  apologetics.     So  great  has  been 
the  multitude  of  counsels  that  the  wisdom  has  been  often  hard 
to  find  j  but  the  Points-no-Points,  which  fail  us  as  we  hug  the 
shore,  come  out  clearly  in  the  offing,  flashing  beacon  lights. 
The  grand  result  as  to  the  Synoptic  Gospels  is  that  the  pri- 
ority belongs  to  Mark,  that  Matthew  comes  next,  and  Luke 
the  last,  with  intervals  not  long  between.     The  allowances  of 
the  more  conservative  and  the  revisions  of  the  more  radical 
suggest  the  last  quarter  of  the  first  century  as  the  time-limit 
that  includes  them  all.     The  interest  attaching  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel  is  hardly  less  central   to  the  New  Testament  than 
that  attaching  to  the  Pentateuch  is  to  the  Old.     After  much 
pushing   back    and   forward   on    the    smoky  field,  the   fight 
seems  nearly  at  an  end,  and  the  victory  to  be  with  those  de- 
nying the  authorship  of  John.     For  the  last  twenty-five  years 
the  tendency  has  been  strong  this  way,  as  for  twenty  years 
before,  after  the   Rupert  charge  of  Baur,  it  was  the   other. 
But  the  final  victory  has  not  been  upon  the  lines  of  Baur's 
position,  either  in  the  matter  of  date  (170  a.d.  was  Baur's)  or 
character.    There  came  a  time  in  tunnelling  Mont  Ce'nis  when 
the  workmen  from  one  end  heard  the  click  of  tools  which 
were  in  the  hands  of  workmen  from  the  other  end.     Some- 
thing like  this  has  happened  in  the  criticism  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel.    Both  parties  have  not  been  working  for  the  same  re- 
sult.    The  defenders  of  the  authenticity  have  been  endeavor- 
ing to  find  some  piece  of  harder  rock  there  in  the  aarkness 
that  should  bar  the  others'  way.     But  ledge  after  ledge  has 
crumbled  at  their  feet  under  their  vigorous  tests,  until  at  last 
they  hear  the  click  of  the   opposing  tools, —  the  sooner,  be- 
cause the   opposing  party  have  come  toward  them  a  good 
deal   further   than    they  were    led   by    Baur.     To   drop    the 
simile,  each  side  has  been  compelled  to  make  concessions 
by  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  great  debate,  until  at  length 
they  stand  quite  comfortably  together  on  the  common  ground 
that  the  gospel,  in  its  present  form,  was  written  in  the  sec- 


42  The  Constructive  Achievements 

ond  quarter  of  the  second  century ;  that  its  long  discourses 
are  the  parts  farthest  removed  from  the  historic  truth  ;  that, 
nevertheless,  there  are  elements  of  a  genuine  tradition,  both 
of  fact  and  phrase,  which  may  have  derived  its  impulse  from 
the  apostle  John.  To  this  conclusion  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  Justin  Martyr  did  or  did  not  know  of  such  a  gospel 
in  the  fourth  decade  of  the  second  century.  "  The  swan  " 
upon  that  once  much  troubled  lake  "floats  double,  swan 
and  shadow." 

With  regard  to  Paul's  Epistles,  also,  the  tendency  is  to  a 
more  liberal  allowance  than  the  four  allowed  to  him  by  Baur, — 
Romans,  the  two  Corinthians,  and  Galatians ;  the  additions, 
First  Thessalonians,  Philippians,  Colossians,  and  Philemon. 
If  there  are  Gnostic  elements  in  these,  may  they  not  be  pro- 
phetic streaks  of  dawn,  and  not  reflections  of  the  fulness  of 
that  fierce  and  sultry  day  ?  Taking  these  eight,  we  have 
in  them  the  growth  of  Paul's  ideal  Jesus  from  a  man  in  Thes- 
salonians, through  the  increasing  grandeurs  of  Corinthians 
and  Romans,  until  at  length  in  the  Epistles  to  the  Colos- 
sians and  Philippians  he  stands  upon  the  utmost  verge  of 
super-angelic  power  and  grace,  where,  but  a  step  and  he  has 
crossed  the  mystic  line  which  divides  him  from  the  Eternal 
Logos  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Another  constructive  achieve- 
ment of  the  Higher  Criticism  has  related  the  pastoral  Epis- 
tles to  the  developments  and  controversies  of  the  second 
century,  and  also  those  ascribed  to  John  and  Peter's  sec- 
ond. Meantime,  the  Apocalypse,  which  was  once  the  impreg- 
nable fort  of  John,  from  which  the  authenticity  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  was  battered  down,  is  now  generally  given  up  as  his, 
Martineau  following  some  of  the  strongest  Germans  in  the 
idea  that  it  is  a  Jewish  Apocalypse  of  69  ad.,  or  thereabout, 
with  Christian  head  and  tail  pieces  and  additions  of  a  later 
date. 

Time  presses,  and  I  cannot  as  I  would  exhibit  that  most 
significant  achievement  of  this  criticism, —  the  connection  of 
the  New  Testament  books,  almost  without  exception,  with 
the  controversy   between  Judaizing  and  universalizing  ten- 


of  the  Higher  Criticism.  43 

dencies,  of  which  Peter  and  Paul  were  the  actual  and  ideal 
representatives.  Unquestionably,  this  tendency  business  has 
been  overdone.  But,  when  every  proper  abatement  has  been 
made  from  its  first  extravagance,  it  remains  as  central  and 
interpretative  to  the  New  Testament  as  the  tendency  to 
priestly  or  prophetic  interpretation  is  to  the  Old,  like  that 
marshalling  the  different  books  the  way  that  they  should  go, 
fixing  their  order  of  precedence,  and,  like  that,  giving  a  splen- 
dor of  dramatic  interest  to  the  whole  body  of  literature  which 
it  never  had  before. 

The  general   result,  we   are  assured,  does   not  invalidate 
the  essentials  of  the  gospel  history.     That  depends  on  what 
the  essentials  are.     If  they  are  the  facts,  whatever  they  may 
be,  it  does  not  invalidate  them  ;  for  nothing  can  invalidate  a 
fact.     If  they  are  "  the  Christian  creed  "  of  the  "  Lux  Mundi  " 
people,  it  is  so  "disastrous"  to  them  that  those  people  may 
well  insist  that  the   method  of  Old  Testament  criticism  can- 
not be  safely  used  upon  the  New.     For  here,  too,  the  general 
result  is  an  ideal  evolution, —  an  evolution  of  the  nature  of 
Jesus   as  conceived  from  time  to  time,  beginning  with  the 
pure  humanity  of   the  Synoptic  Gospels   and  ascending  by 
degrees  through  the  earlier  and  later  Epistles  of  Saint  Paul 
until  it  reaches  its  climax  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  where  as  the 
Eternal   Logos,  though  infinitely  more  than  man,  he  is  not 
yet  identical  and  commensurate  with  God.     How  is  it  pos- 
sible  in   this  heel  of  time  for   any  one  acquainted  with  the 
idealizing  tendencies  of  religious  sentiment  and  of  personal 
devotion  to  believe  that  in  the  last,  and  not  in  the  first  of 
these  opinions,  we  have  the  more  exact  report  ?     It  is  only 
possible  by  wilfully  disowning  everything  we  know  of  such 
idealizing  tendencies.     Who  can  help  seeing  that  the  change 
in  Paul's  own  thought  was  purely  one  of  daring  speculation  ? 
If  there  is  one  constructive  achievement  of  New  Testament 
criticism  that  is  more  manifest  than  any  other,  it  is  the  pure 
humanity  of  Jesus,  the  natural  and  almost  inevitable  relation 
of  his  thought  and  work  to  the  time  and  place  which  made 
the  circumstantial  setting  of  his  life  and  death. 

The  grand  achievement  of  Biblical  Criticism  is  not  merely 


44  ^-^^^  HigJicr  Criticism, 

a  separate  synthesis  of  Old  Testament  and  New  :  it  is  a 
synthesis  including  both  in  its  majestic  sweep.  There  is  no 
break  in  the  development  from  the  fetichism  of  the  early 
Semites  to  the  filial  and  fraternal  heart  on  which  the  loved 
disciple  leaned.  And  the  development  is  as  strictly  human 
as  that  of  any  child  from  his  first  feebleness  to  the  maturity 
of  all  his  powers.  Human,  but  not  therefore  any  less 
divine;  for  there  is  nothing  without  God.  We  cannot  depre- 
cate too  much  such  words  as  Canon  Driver's,  when  he  says 
■of  the  negative  and  positive  achievements  of  the  Higher 
Criticism,  "  They  do  not  touch  either  the  authority  or  in- 
spiration of  the  Scriptures."  They  do  not,  if  by  their  author- 
ity is  meant  the  weight  of  their  established  truth,  and  by 
their  inspiration  is  meant  their  power  to  touch  our  hearts  and 
quicken  us  to  higher  things.  But,  if  they  mean  the  authority 
and  inspiration  of  a  special,  supernatural  revelation,  such 
inspiration  and  authority  are  pulverized  by  the  impact  of  the 
critic's  negative  and  positive  results.  And  why  endeavor  to 
make  it  appear  that  it  is  otherwise  than  so  ?  Why  stretch 
out  the  hands  to  save  "  the  sifted  sediment  of  a  residuum," 
when  a  cup  of  blessing  full  to  overflowing  is  so  near.? 
There  is  a  kind  of  atheism  in  the  endeavor  to  save  some 
special  aspect  of  the  world  to  God,  as  if  all  things  and  persons 
and  events  were  not  the  channels  of  his  boundless  tide. 
The  amount  of  Holy  Scripture  is  not  lessened,  but  immeasur- 
ably increased,  when  the  partition  walls  between  the  Bible 
and  all  other  noble  literature  are  broken  down,  and  we  can 
go  in  and  out  and  find  pasture,  never  escaping  from  the  care 
and  guidance  of  that  Power  which    saith,    "  All    souls    are 


^nine." 


"  Take  heart,  the  Master  builds  again  ; 
A  charmed  life  old  goodness  hath ; 
The  tares  may  perish,  but  the  grain 
Is  not  for  death. 

*' God  works  in  all  things;  all  obey 

His  long  propulsion  from  the  night; 
Ho  !  watch  and  wait ;  the  world  is  gray 
With  morning  light." 


TEMPTED  OF  GOD. 


It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  the  writer  of  the  Epistle 
of  James  —  who  was  possibly,  but  not  probably,  James,  the 
brother  of  Jesus  —  was  justified  in  his  confidence  that  no  man, 
when  he  is  tempted,  should  say  he  is  tempted  of  God.  His 
way  out  of  the  difficulty  was  not  entirely  satisfactory.  His 
solution  of  the  problem  was,  at  best,  but  superficial :  "But 
each  man  is  tempted,  when  he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own  lust, 
and  enticed."  The  tendency  of  human  nature  to  be  "  drawn 
away  of  its  own  lust,  and  enticed,"  is  a  tendency  rooted  in 
the  fundamental  ground  of  things.  It  is  a  tendency  which  we 
could  not  safely,  would  not  willingly,  forego.  It  is  a  tendency 
on  which  depend  the  tragedy  of  history  and  the  pathos  and 
the  power  of  literature  in  no  small  degree.  We  might  get 
along  without  these ;  but  we  could  not  get  along  without  the 
greatness  and  the  dignity  of  human  life,  which  are  insepara- 
ble from  the  tendency  which  makes  for  these,  inseparable 
from  the  conflict  of  that  tendency  with  the  better  self.  But 
there  are  temptations  from  above  as  well  as  from  below ; 
and,  even  if  it  could  be  shown  that  all  the  latter  are  empty 
of  divine  significance,  the  former  would  remain,  and  would 
be  divine  temptations  even  by  the  canons  of  that  wretched 
dualism  which  has  always  dominated  Christian  thought.  It 
is  too  much  the  habit  of  our  speech  to  talk  as  if  all  the 
temptations  of  society  and  the  inner  life  were  away  from 
all  the  high  and  pure  and  holy  things.  Surely,  it  is  not 
so.  Surely,  there  are  temptations  to  these  things.  Tempted 
of  God  are  we,  as  well  as  of  the  Devil,  whatever  we  may  think 
about  the  origin  of  the  devilish  temptations  in  the  economy 


46  Tempted  of  God. 

of  the  universe.  Tempted  of  good  are  we,  as  well  as  by  the 
bad, —  so  tempted  that  the  wonder  is  that  anybody  can  be 
tempted  by  the  power  of  lower  things  to  take  the  lower  road. 
As  I  think  of  the  temptations  to  falseness,  baseness,  envy, 
mean  and  brutish  sin,  and,  over  against  these,  of  the  temp- 
tations to  nobility  and  generosity,  to  purity  and  truth,  to 
heroism  and  fidelity,  I  sometimes  wonder  that  there  is  any 
badness  in  the  world  ;  that  all  are  not  enticed  by  the  be- 
seeching loveliness  of  virtue  to  abide  forever  in  her  house. 
Tempted  of  God  are  we  by  all  the  tender  and  majestic 
beauty  of  the  world.  I  thought  I  never  saw  the  world  so 
beautiful  as  it  was  last  Monday,"^  as  I  went  from  here  to 
Boston  on  the  train.  Partly  it  was  no  doubt  by  sense  of 
contrast  with  ouv  city  streets  with  their  mad  rush  for  all  those 
ugly,  useless  things  with  which  the  Christmas  time  tempts 
the  unwary  purchaser ;  t  partly  in  contrast  with  their  ever- 
narrowing  dome  of  blue.  A  judicious  critic  at  the  Academy 
consoled  himself  with  the  reflection  that  the  ladies  "march- 
ing single  in  an  endless  file  "  before  the  pictures  concealed 
nothing  lovelier  than  themselves.  That  cannot  be  said  of 
our  elevated  railways,  nor  even  of  the  handsomest  of  the 
great  commercial  buildings  and  hotels  by  which  we  climb  to 
heaven.  But  it  was  not  by  force  of  contrast  only  that  my 
ride  unrolled  for  me  a  panorama  of  unwearying  delight.  The 
beauty  that  engaged  my  eye  and  heart  was  not  merely  rela- 
tive, but  absolute.  It  was  in  "  the  volleying  rain  "  that  rat- 
tled on  the  windows  of  the  car,  making  all  manner  of  ex- 
quisite parabolas  and  intersecting  lines.  What  is  there 
meaner  than  a  cinder  in  your  eye  ?  but  how  pretty  those  im- 
prisoned in  their  several  translucent  drops  and  whirling 
round  with  ceaseless  motion !  How  curious  to  me  !  yet 
possibly,  I  thought,  for  one  acquainted  with  the  law  of  such 
relations,  an  illustration  of  those  laws  that  keep  the  universe 

*  Dec.  7,  iSgi. 

t  Correcting  the  proof  of  my  sermon  after  Christmas,  I  am  reminded  that  there  were 
many  pretty,  useful  things  also,  and  that  even  the  ugliest  were  sometimes  made  most 
beautiful  by  the  love  that  gave  itself  with  them. 


Tempted  of  God.  47 

in  time  and  tune.  How  beautiful,  moreover,  were  the  hurry- 
ing clouds,  great  masses  of  them,  with  outriders  here  and 
there  posting  across  the  sky !  and  how  beautiful  the  leafless 
trees, —  so  shapely  in  their  naked  strength  and  grace  that  I 
could  not  but  wonder  whether  their  beauty  unadorned  with 
summer's  drapery  was  not  adorned  the  most !  At  least,  the 
absence  of  that  drapery  revealed  the  lovely  contours  of  the 
hills,  and  its  faded  splendor  embrowned  the  nooks  and  hol- 
lows with  a  tone  more  restful  than  June's  flashing  green  ; 
while,  if  my  sense  craved  something  of  more  positive  tone, 
there  was  ever  and  anon  the  purple  and  the  gold  of  grasses 
in  the  swamps  and  meadows  and  along  the  margin  of  the 
booming  sea.  What  day  of  brightest  sunshine  could,  I 
thought,  compare  with  this  ! 

The  next  day  but  one  I  had  a  chance  to  judge.  There 
never  was  a  brighter  or  a  bluer  day,  the  blueness  of  the 
overflowing  streams  paling,  but  shaming  not,  the  blueness  of 
the  sky.  Which  was  the  lovelier, —  the  gray  day  or  the  gold  ? 
In  truth,  I  have  not  yet  made  up  my  mind,  and  think  I  never 
shall.  And  what  is  the  moral  of  the  parable  ?  That  Nature 
is  at  any  time  more  beautiful  than  words  can  say  or  heart 
can  hold,  when  we  come  straight  to  her  and  look  her  fairly 
in  the  face.  The  great  singer,  questioned  as  to  the  most 
beautiful  of  operas  or  songs,  replied,  "  The  one  I  happen  to 
be  singing."  So  Nature's  loveliest  aspect  is  that  which  for 
the  time  she  wears.  And  still  I  dally  on  the  threshold  of 
my  inmost  thought :  Tempted  of  God  are  we  by  all  the 
tender  and  majestic  beauty  of  the  world.  Only  a  step,  and 
I  am  safe  within.  For  many  times  those  days  I  found  my- 
self asking  how  it  was  possible  for  men  to  build  against 
such  skies  and  hills  and  by  such  shining  streams  such 
miracles  of  ugliness  as  were  many  of  the  structures  hous- 
ing their  throbbing  industries  and  their  domestic  peace  or 
strife ;  *  and  many  times,  if  not  as  many,  I  found  myself 
making   little    psalms    of    gratitude    to    those    who    had    so 

*But  housing  oftentimes,  I  know,  the  energy  which  made  the  speed  and  comfort  of 
my  ride  and  spiritual  things  immeasurably  pure  and  good. 


48  Tempted  of  God. 

wrought  that  their  houses  and  their  barns  seemed  but  the 
sweet  continuance  of  Nature's  plan,  so  that  she  gladly  gave 
them  place,  and  granted  them,  if  not  an  equal  date  with 
Andes  and  with  Ararat,  an  equal  date  with  century-growing 
trees  and  the  alluvial  hills.  And  then  I  thought.  But  what 
a  little  part  of  all  the  boundless  beauty  of  the  world  is  that 
which  I  have  seen  in  these  two  days  and  along  these  two 
centuries  and  a  half  of  homely  landscape  back  and  forth, 
and  what  are  "the  huts  where  poor  men  lie,"  the  sumptuous 
villas  of  their  rich  relations,  in  comparison  with  the  lives 
that  poor  and  rich  build  up  from  earth  to  heaven  ?  And,  if 
the  temptation  of  the  beauteous  world  for  all  who  build  in 
wood  or  brick  or  stone  is  clear  and  strong  to  make  their 
work  so  harmonize  with  Nature's  plan  that  it  shall  not  be 
a  blot  upon  her  loveliness,  should  not  the  temptation  of 
God's  world  of  beauty  perfect  and  entire  be  irresistible  for 
all  men  working  in  the  imperishable  materials  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  life  to  make  their  lives  by  their  simplicity 
and  sincerity,  their  noble  forms  of  action,  their  lovely  orna- 
ments of  art  and  song,  worthy  such  fair  and  glorious  environ- 
ment as  that  in  which  they  have  been  set  ?  Our  senses  are, 
we  hear,  the  posterns  by  which  treacherous  sins  come  in  and 
spoil  our  heavenly  city.  "  In  my  flesh,"  said  the  apostle, 
"  dwelleth  no  good  thing."  But,  however  it  may  be  with  the 
other  senses,  is  not  that  which  is  our  bountiful  purveyor  of 
the  vision  of  all  fair  and  perfect  things  a  splendid  portal  for 
the  welcome  of  our  best  allies,  a  sally-port  through  which 
our  nature's  banded  strength  may  stream  to  victory  ?  So 
thought  at  least  our  Emerson,  when  he  sang:  — 

"  Daily  the  bending  skies  solicit  man, 
The  seasons  chariot  him  from  this  exile, 
The  rainbow  hours  bedeck  his  glowing  chair, 
The  storm- winds  urge  the  heavy  weeks  along, 
Suns  haste  to  set,  that  so  remoter  lights 
Beckon  the  wanderer  to  his  vaster  home." 

Tempted    of   God    are  we    not   only   by   the    tender    and 
majestic  beauty  of  the  world,  but  by  the  course  of  human 


I 


Tempted  of  God.  49 

history,  by  the   seal    that  course  has  set  on  all  nobility  of 
word  and  deed.     "  Oh  that  thou  wouldst  rend  the  heavens 
and  come  down  !  "  the  ancient  psalmist  prayed.     But  if  He 
could,  and  walk  our  streets  with  us,  and  explain  to  us  across 
our  tables  what  he  would  have  us  do,  I  do  not  see  how  he 
could  make  any  plainer  than  he  has  made  by  the  course  of 
history  what  are  the  things  belonging  to  our  peace.     If  the 
course   of   history  does  not  show  that  the  Power  which  is 
central  to  humanity  is  a  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness, 
then    is   it   altogether  dumb.     If   the   whole    course    is    too 
stupendous  for  the  imagination  and  the  heart,  detach  from  it 
any  striking  epoch, —  that  of  the  Commonwealth  in  England, 
that  of  our  Revolutionary  struggle,  that  of  our  anti-slavery 
struggle  and    our    Civil  War, —  I  do  not  see  how  men  can 
read  of  such  things  and  resist  the  strength  of  their  tempta- 
tion to  the  best  and  honorablest  things.     The  other  day  I 
dipped  into  Green's  ".History  of  the   English  People"  for 
some  special  fact  in  the  last  years  of  Elizabeth  or  the  first  of 
James.     But  I  had    trusted    myself   to   a  flood  on  which  I 
was  as  helpless  as  if  I  had  embarked  above  the  rapids  of 
Niagara  and  ventured  out  on   their  resistless  tide.     I   was 
swept    along   from    one    decade    to    another   with    an    ever 
quicker  pulse  and  stormier  heart,  and  at  the  end  found  my- 
self   asking  how  it  was  possible  for   men  to   read   of   such 
things  and  resist  their  impulse  to  the  generous  and    brave 
and  true.    The  question,  "Can  virtue  be  taught?"  is  one  that 
Plato  asked.     "  Not  much,"  we  answer  him,  "by  formal  pre- 
cept ;    plentifully  by  the  divine  contagion  of    the   high  and 
true  in  literature  and  living  men."     To   breathe  an  atmos- 
phere of  high  nobility  is  to  grow  strong  for  the  resistances 
and  conquests  of  the  moral  life.     And  such  an  atmosphere 
bathes  every  height  that  marks  the  conflict  of  man's  living 
spirit  with  the  strength  of  old  abuse  and  vested  wrong. 

But  it  is  when  the  great  movements  of  history  centre  in 
great  personalities  that  they  become  the  temptations  of  God 
to  high  nobility  in  the  most  obvious  and  impressive  way. 


50  Tempted  of  God. 

"  My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold 
A  rainbow  in  the  sky." 

It  leaps  up  —  oh,  how  much  more  proudly  and  rejoic- 
ingly!—  when  we  behold  the  splendors  of  heroism  and 
fidelity  and  sacrifice  that  enrich  the  firmament  of  history.  If 
we  would  not  be  led  into  temptation  to  right-doing  stronger 
than  we  can  resist,  let  us  avoid,  as  wise  men  would  the  hope- 
less gate,  the  pages  which  recount  the  histories  of  good  and 
noble  men,  not  only  those  of  brilliant  action,  but  those  of 
quiet  thought, —  friends  and  aiders  of  those  who  would  live 
in  the  spirit.  And  what  volume  and  momentum  to  the 
temptations  of  the  highest  to  its  height  have  been  added  by 
the  printed  book  !  I  have  seen  many  mottoes  in  men's 
libraries.  One  I  have  never  seen,  I  think,  would  be  the  best : 
"  Seeing  that  we  are  compassed  about  by  so  great  a  cloud  of 
witnesses,  let  us  lay  aside  every  weight  and  the  sin  that 
doth  easily  beset  us,  and  let  us  run  with  patience  the  race 
set  before  us."  "  As  good  almost  kill  a  man,"  said  Milton, 
"  as  a  good  book  ;  for  a  good  book  is  the  precious  life-blood 
of  a  master  spirit,  embalmed  and  treasured  up  on  purpose  to 
a  life  beyond  life."  How  many  such  look  down  upon  us 
from  our  shelves  !  Then  most,  it  seems  to  me,  the  precious 
life-blood  throbs  in  them  when  they  make  real  for  us  the 
personality  of  the  great  and  good.     With  such  presences  and 

helps, 

"  It  may  be  wilderness  without, 
Far  feet  of  failing  men ; 
But  holiday  excludes  the  night, 
And  it  is  bells  within." 

But  all  men  have  not  libraries  about  them,  books  on  their 
shelves  which  clang  like  spear  and  shield  to  stir  their  pulses 
to  a  knightly  temper  and  resolve ;  and  all  men  do  not  know 
the  course  of  history,  and  feel  the  force  of  its  temptations 
to  all  truth  and  right.  All  this  is  so  ;  but  in  the  width  of 
Christendom  there  are  few  who  have  not  one  book,  the  New 
Testament,  which  is  the  precious  life-blood  of  one  master- 


Tempted  of  God.  5 1 

spirit,  the  story  of  whose  great  humanity,  whose  yearning 
pity,  whose  divine  compassion,  is  such  a  temptation  of  God's 
hohness  to  ours  as  cannot  be  overborne  or  utterly  obscured 
by  all  the  theologians'  patient  arts,  weaving  their  veils  and 
painted  tapestries  between  his  image  and  our  eyes.  "  If  I 
be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,"  he  said,  "  I  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me."  Lifted  up  he  has  been  by  all  the  faithful  and 
discerning  scholarship  of  the  modern  world,  by  all  the 
sturdy  common  sense  which,  without  much  aid  of  scholar- 
ship, has  been  able  to  disengage  the  man  from  all  the  wrap- 
pages of  the  dogmatists ;  and,  if  he  does  not  draw  all  men  to 
him,  it  is  because  some  have  been  somehow  spoiled  for  the 
appreciation  and  the  reverence  and  love  of  what  is  loveliest 
and  best  in  human  life. 

Not  only  by  the  outward  beauty  of  the  world  and  by  the 
course  of  history  and  its  great  names  and  high  examples,  but 
as  well  by  those  whom  we  have  personally  known,  men  and 
women  in  whom  the  beauty  of  holiness  and  the  beauty  of 
helpfulness  have  shone  with  equal  light.  In  whatever 
calling  we  are  called,  in  whatever  round  of  circumstance  we 
may  be  set,  there  will  be  those  about  us  truer  and  better 
than  ourselves,  who  by  the  simplicity  of  their  goodness 
make  it  shine  for  us  with  pressing  invitation.  All  do  not  so. 
Some  wear  their  virtue  with  so  great  a  difference  from  these, 
so  consciously,  with  such  superior  airs,  with  such  dread  of 
happiness  as  if  that  were  the  most  deadly  sin,  that  they  make 
virtue  questionable,  if  not  repulsive,  in  our  eyes.  If,  to  be 
virtuous,  we  must  be  like  these,  then  we  will  not  be  virtuous  : 
such  is  the  argument  they  lend  our  creed.  Good  men  have 
much  to  answer  for  in  every  time,  so  much  have  they  availed 
to  make  all  goodness  seem  to  men  who  balance  good  and  ill 
a  harsh,  repellent  thing.  I  sometimes  wonder  if  the  bad  have 
done  so  much  to  draw  these  doubters  to  themselves  as  the 
unlovely  good  to  drive  them  to  the  bad  by  their  repellent 
force.  Yet,  in  the  midst  of  these,  God's  tempters  do  not  fail, 
—  the  men  and  women  who  wear  their  goodness  with  such 
simplicity  and  native  grace  that  to  come  near  them  is  to  be 


52  Tempted  of  God. 

charmed  by  their  benignity  and  to  make  compact  with  our- 
selves, Sucli  goodness  shall  be  ours.  So  it  would  seem 
that  it  must  be;  that  the  purity,  the  integrity,  the  tenderness, 
the  thoughtfulness,  the  generosity,  the  self-surrender,  of  these 
tempters  of  God,  shine  with  such  happy  light  that  it  would 
be  impossible  for  any  to  come  near  to  them  and  not  be 
drawn  into  the  service  of  the  things  they  love.  With  so 
many  generous  men  in  the  community,  who  from  the  exer- 
cise of  their  generosity  reap  such  noble  satisfaction,  it  is  in- 
comprehensible how  some,  and  not  a  few,  are  able  to  resist 
the  fascination  of  their  joyous  helpfulness,  and  go  on  earning 
and  hoarding  only  for  themselves,  or  spending  only  on  the 
lines  of  selfish  pleasure  or  to  glut  the  already  jaded  appe- 
tites of  their  immediate  families  and  friends.  One  is  not 
sorrier  for  the  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  moment  that 
deserve,  but  lack,  their  help  than  for  their  miserable  delusion, 
their  building  on  such  barren  rocks,  when  happy  isles  are  just 
at  hand.  The  temptations  from  beneath  must  be  of  dread- 
ful strength  when  such  temptations  from  above  do  not  avail 
to  make  them  less  than  nought.  But  these  by  which  God 
tempts  us  to  the  better  way  are  not  of  feeble  force.  And, 
thank  Heaven,  to  encounter  them,  we  need  not,  some  of  us, 
go  far  afield  !  Their  healing  shadows  are  upon  the  floors  of 
chambers  where  we  sleep,  rooms  where  we  eat  our  daily 
bread  or  have  our  evening  talk.  And  their  temptation  is  so 
sweet  and  strong  to  every  noblest  habit  of  the  soul  that,  even 
while  such  habits  seem  impossible  for  us,  we  are  drawn  into 
their  charmed  circle  ever  more  and  more  by  imperceptible 
degrees. 

We  often  hear  of  the  temptations  of  the  business  world, — 
that  they  were  never  so  great  before  as  they  are  now.  And 
this  is  true  enough  ;  but  it  is  not  truer  of  the  temptations  from 
beneath  than  of  the  temptations  from  above.  What  are  a  few 
thousands,  or  a  few  millions,  more  or  less,  compared  with  the 
noble  self-esteem  of  those  who  feel  themselves  in  honor  bound 
to  do  nothing  to  imperil  that  mutual  trust  and  confidence  on 
which  the  good  of  all  depends  ;  compared  with  realization  of 


Tempted  of  God.  53 

the  ideal  of  compulsory  nobility, —  advantages  are  obliga- 
tions? To  be  tempted  by  such  generous  ideals  is  to  be 
tempted  of  God  in  the  great  world  of  business  with  its 
fierce  and  passionate  competitions  and  its  vast,  immeasurable 
unrest.  And  one  has  only  to  regard  this  world  with  a 
judicial  mind  to  see  that  these  temptations  or  some  others 
to  the  highest  and  the  best  are  of  a  mighty  potency.  Let 
there  be  any  great  catastrophe  upon  the  street,  the  col- 
lapse of  some  long-standing  house,  the  breaking  down  of 
some  distinguished  reputation,  and  immediately  there  is  a 
chorus  of  the  Jeremiahs,  chanting  a  doleful  lamentation 
over  the  rottenness  of  the  commercial  world.  What  such 
catastrophes  do  actually  make  apparent  is  the  bed-rock  of 
mutual  confidence  on  which  rest  all  the  conventional  securi- 
ties of  the  business  world,  and  how  irrefragable  it  generally  is. 

Every  fresh  catastrophe  is  a  fresh  teaching  of  the  abound- 
ing honesty  of  business  men,  contrasting  with  the  abundance 
of  their  opportunities  for  irregularity,  and  to  which  they  are 
much  more  in  honor  bound  than  by  any  artifice  for  its  own 
security  which  the  business  world  has  yet  been  able  to  in- 
vent. And  never  do  the  temptations  of  the  business  man  to 
high  nobility  appear  so  strong  and  irresistible,  and  those  to 
fraudulent  practices  so  weak  and  vain,  as  when  a  great  catas- 
trophe brings  into  vivid  contrast  the  actual  depth  of  fallen 
honor  and  the  possible  heights  which  it  has  foolishly  fore- 
gone. Such  are  the  respect  of  honorable  men,  the  esteem 
of  noble  friends,  the  unshamed  happiness  of  the  hearth  and 
home,  the  approving  voice  of  one's  own  conscience,  the 
noble  consciousness  of  being  one  of  that  great  company 
through  which  the  industrial  order  keeps  its  married  calm. 
As  gold  to  dirt  are  these  compared  with  any  prizes  that  the 
tempter  from  beneath  can  show  to  eager  and  impatient 
men. 

The  temptations  of  the  political  world  furnish  another 
theme  of  frequent  comment;  and  doubtless  they  are  many 
and  of  such  fascinating  quality  that  their  seduction  of  such 
men  as  are  sometimes  elected  to  high  offices  is  not  incon- 


54  Tempted  of  God. 

ceivable.  But,  surely,  there  are  temptations  from  above  as 
well  as  from  below, —  temptations  to  honesty  and  ideal  ends, 
to  lofty  character  and  consecration.  Here  is  a  man  of  char- 
acter and  standing  who  is  made  mayor  of  a  great  city,  or 
governor  of  a  great  State,  or  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  immediately  we  hear  of  the  temptations  that  he  will  en- 
counter ;  and  the  doubt  is  frequently  expressed  whether  he 
will  be  able  to  resist  them,  and  to  effect  an  honorable  and 
honest  administration.  What  are  these  terrible  temptations 
that  can  so  beguile  men  who  have  been  known  as  honest 
gentlemen  to  various  crookedness  ?  The  good  will  of  the 
bosses  and  the  boys  of  the  political  machine  \  perhaps  some 
low  pecuniary  gain ;  the  prospect  of  continuance  in  office  or 
a  higher  place.  But  what  for  any  man,  who  is  not  already 
hopelessly  corrupt,  should  be  the  strength  of  such  tempta- 
tions compared  with  that  of  the  temptations  to  the  heights 
of  character  and  social  help  !  And  what  are  some  of  these  ? 
To  have  a  name  among  the  few  who  have  established  for 
themselves  an  honorable  fame  instead  of  being  nameless 
with  the  swarm  who  have  been  "  neither  for  God  nor  for  his 
enemies,"  or  infamous  with  those  who  have  preferred  to 
drag  their  garlands  in  the  mire ;  to  improve  material  condi- 
ditions  earning  so  the  gratitude  of  decent  folk ;  to  make 
some  juster  law  or  polity  that  shall  be  a  better  monument 
than  one  of  bronze  or  stone ;  to  shame  a  cowardly  constitu- 
ency into  honorable  ways,  or,  failing  to  do  that,  to  set  over 
against  their  baseness  a  perennial  rebuke,  a  name  the  best 
can  conjure  with  until  the  devils  have  come  out,  albeit 
rending  as  they  come.  These,  and  such  as  these,  are  the 
temptations  that  beset  the  servants  of  the  people  —  mayors 
and  governors  and  presidents  —  on  the  right  hand  and  the 
left.  Tempted  of  God  are  they  to  these  high  ways,  to  these 
good  things,  in  comparison  with  which  their  temptations 
from  beneath  are  so  contemptible  that  it  would  not  be 
strange  if  those  before  content  with  lowest  aims  should  find 
the  highest  none  too  high  for  them  to  seize  and  hold. 

But,  when  God  would  make  most  irresistible  his  tempta- 


Tempted  of  God.  55 

tions  to  things  sweet  and  pure  or  great  and  strong,  then  he 

embodies  them  not  in  the  beauty  of  the  natural  world,  nor 

in  the  course  of  history,  nor  in  its  greatest  names,  nor  in  the 

social  pressures  that  converge  to  force   men  into  high  and 

honorable  ways,  nor  even  in  the    eminent  goodness  of  our 

companions  and  our  friends,  but  in  the  love  which  binds  the 

hearts  of  its  beloved  to  all  noblest  service  of  the  good  and 

true. 

"  There's  nothing  in  the  world,  I  know, 
That  can  escape  from  love  ; 
For  every  depth  it  goes  below 

And  every  height  above. 
It  waits,  as  waits  the  sky 
Until  the  clouds  go  by, 
Secure  when  they  are  gone 
And  when  they  stay." 

Men  may  resist  the  God-temptation  of  the  most  exigent 
nobility  of  word  and  deed  ;  but  how  can  they  resist  the  love 
that  yearns  unceasingly  for  their  good, —  nay,  how  can  they 
resist  the  love  they  feel  for  those  whose  lives,  as  if  God  did 
beseech  them,  plead  with  them  to  put  away  all  manner  of 
unworthiness  ?  And  when  the  friend  whose  love,  our  love 
for  whom,  is  full  of  a  divine  persuasion,  is  lifted  up  out  of 
our  sight,  then  does  the  power  of  his  or  her  temptation 
sometimes  attain  unto  a  rarer  potency  than  it  ever  had  in  the 
old  days  of  visible  companionship.  And  if  it  was  not  then 
what  it  should  have  been,  had  not  the  attraction  and  compul- 
sion that  it  should  have  had  for  us,  let  us  be  glad  of  any 
afterglow  that  softens  for  us  all  the  lights  and  shadows,  and 
in  the  mystic  silence  draws  us  to  secret  haunts  of  memory 
and  prayer.  But  happiest  they  who  do  not  wait  for  any  dis- 
tance between  earth  and  heaven  to  enhance  the  attractive 
force  of  the  befoved  friend,  but,  while  such  a  one  is  safe 
within  their  arms,  offer  the  purest  pledge,  the  sweetest  sacri- 
fice, that  love  can  make, —  a  heart  devoted  to  all  beautiful 
and  blessed  things. 

And    now  I  trust  that  I  have   shown  that,  whatever  our 


56  Tempted  of  God. 

temptations  from  beneath,  we  are  so  tempted  from  above, 
tempted  of  God  in  all  the  wonderful  and  happy  ordering  of 
his  natural  and  human  world,  that  only  by  the  most  miser- 
able neglect  of  our  temptations  to  the  higher  and  the  highest 
things  can  we  fail  of  making  such  a  choice  as  shall  not  only 
make  this  mortal  life  what  it  should  be  in  spiritual  power 
and  grace,  but  at  the  same  time  make  our  assurance  of 
another  life  more  strong,  and  our  entrance  on  its  mystery 
such  as  theirs  who,  coming  among  friends  of  loftiest  nature, 
find  themselves  untroubled  and  at  home. 


THE  PRICE  OF  MORAL  FREEDOM. 


"  With  a  great  price  obtained  I  this  freedom,"  said  the 
Roman  captain.  "  But  I  was  free  born,"  said  Paul.  And  in 
the  two  we  have  a  brief  epitome  of  the  contrasts  that  appear 
in  human  life.  Their  speech  was  of  the  freedom  of  the 
Roman  citizen.  To  have  the  freedom  of  that  citizenship  was 
something  fine  and  great,  as  you  will  easily  appreciate  if  you 
will  pause  a  moment  and  consider  what  the  Roman  Empire 
was  in  the  first  century  of  its  career,  over  how  many  lands 
the  city  of  the  Tiber  held  the  shield  of  her  protection  and 
her  flaming  sword,  the  splendors  of  her  constructive  genius 
and  the  beneficence  of  her  sway,  and  the  long  period  of 
peace  that  she  had  given  to  the  world,  one  of  the  longest  in 
its  history.  No  wonder  men  were  proud  if  they  could  claim 
that  they  were  born  into  the  freedom  of  that  city  which  in 
its  political  structure  was  coextensive  with  the  empire  in  its 
sweep  from  Spain  to  Syria  and  from  the  coasts  of  Africa  to 
those  of  Germany  and  Britain  !  No  wonder  those  who  were 
not  born  citizens  of  that  city  were  glad  to  buy  its  freedom 
with  a  great   sum  of  money  ! . 

But  there  is  an  empire  in  comparison  with  which  that  of 
the  Roman  city  was  of  narrow  bounds  and  trivial  power  and 
petty  history.  It  includes  that  and  every  other  empire  that 
has  come  and  gone  among  the  chapters  of  its  history  and  the 
illustrations  of  its  growth  and  power.  It  is  the  empire  of 
the  moral  life  of  man.  To  have  the  freedom  of  this  empire, 
to  be  born  into  it,  if  that  were  possible, —  what  a  glorious 
privilege  were  that !  If  not  so  privileged,  were  any  sum  too 
great  to  pay  for  it,  if  haply  we  might  have  it  for  our  own  in 
indefeasible  possession  ? 


58  TJie  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

The  Roman  captain  and  the  apostle,  I  have  said,  the  one 
boasting  himself  a  free-born  citizen,  the  other  that  he  had 
bought  his  freedom  with  a  great  sum,  epitomize  in  brief  the 
differences  and  contrasts  in  the  empire  of  our  moral  life.  Be- 
tween these  two  extremes  herd  the  great  multitude,  the  vast 
majority  of  men  and  women,  neither  born  free  nor  the  possess- 
ors of  a  freedom  they  have  bought  for  little  or  for  much. 
Time  was  when  a  liberal  theology,  that  of  our  Unitarian 
pioneers,  found  in  the  born  freedom  of  the  apostle  the  type  of 
every  man's  original  estate.  It  made  no  allowance,  or  the 
most  insufficient,  for  the  differences  of  natural  organization, 
the  excellences  or  the  deformities  and  limitations  of  our  in- 
heritance from  former  generations.  Each  new-born  baby  was 
a  new-born  Adam,  with  no  past  behind  him  either  to  help 
him  onward  or  retard  him  on  his  way.  His  will  was  free, 
unhampered  by  the  dead  men's  clothes  which  do  not  soon 
wear  out,  according  to  the  canons  of  our  later  teachings  of 
heredity  and  atavism^ —  the  reversion  of  the  individual  to  the 
physical  or  moral  likeness  of  some  far-off  ancestor  or  racial 
type.  For  him  there  was  the  choice  of  Hercules  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  other  —  love  sacred  and  profane,  persuading 
him  with  counter-invitation ;  and,  he  could  take  or  leave, 
whichever  one  he  would.  It  was  a  very  simple  and  attrac- 
tive exposition,  and  it  had  in  it  one  element  of  great  advan- 
tage over  the  traditional  creed.  Assuring  men  that  they 
were  free  to  choose  the  higher  and  to  spurn  the  lower 
things,  it  helped  to  make  them  so  in  very  deed  and  truth  ; 
while,  for  those  who  believed  themselves  "  born  under  sin  " 
and  without  any  power  in  themselves  to  break  its  hold,  it 
was  most  natural  to  say,  "  The  villainy  you  teach  me  I  will 
execute  ;  and  it  shall  go  hard  but  I  will  better  the  instruc- 
tion." That  not  more  were  found  to  act  upon  this  hint 
shows  how  much  better  human  nature  was  than  Calvin 
said.  Men  who  believed  that  the  Almighty,  for  the  praise 
of  his  glorious  justice,  had  probably  elected  them  to  everlast- 
ing wickedness  and  shame,  went  on  doing  the  best  they 
knew  year  after  year,    more    worshipful  than  he. 


The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  59 

But  our  early  Unitarian  exposition  of  human  nature  and 
ability,  so  simple,  so  attractive,  so  encouraging,  has  broken 
down  under  the  weight  of  countless  illustrations  of  the  dif- 
ferences in  men's  inborn  tendencies  and  dispositions,  the 
differences  of  their  opportunities  as  well,  to  which  weight  has 
been  added,  making  the  catastrophe  more  absolute,  that  of 
the  whole  mass  of  evolutionary  principles,  with  their  assur- 
ance of  the  shaping  influence  and  control  of  an  incalculable 
hereditary  force.  And  so  it  happens  that,  just  when  the 
Calvinistic  doctrines  of  depravity  and  election  are  drawing 
near  to  the  extinction  of  even  that  ghostly  adumbration  in 
which  they  have  for  some  time  now  survived  their  first 
estate,  you  will  often  find  our  Unitarians  asking  if  those 
doctrines  were  not,  after  all,  poor,  clumsy  symbols  of  things 
very  real  and  terrible  in  our  human  life, —  the  inheritance  of 
evil  tendency,  the  fatal  power  of  this,  conjoined  with  that 
of  baleful  circumstance^  to  overmaster  and  enslave  the  moral 
will.  That  some  are  born  free  they  make  no  positive  denial. 
Willing  and  glad  are  they  to  recognize  that  it  is  so,  to  hail 
the  favored  natures,  all  of  whose  aptitudes  and  instincts, 
tendencies  and  inclinations,  gravitate  to  pure  and  noble 
things.  Though  mindful  of  certain  disappointments  here 
and  there  where  they  were  least  expected,  volcanic  erup- 
tions of  iniquity  breaking  through  where  never  a  rumble  of 
disorderly  passion  had  been  heard  before,  they  would  say, 
"  Let  not  him  that  putteth  on  the  harness  boast  himself  as 
he  that  taketh  it  off."  They  would  have  men  not  too  con- 
fident that  they  can  take  the  apostle's  boast  of  native  free- 
dom on  their  lips.  But  that  many  are  born  into  a  state  of 
slavery  they  have  as  little  doubt.  For  them  the  huts  of 
narrow,  selfish  aims,  the  manacles  of  evil  tendency,  the  lash 
of  master-passions  driving  them  to  servile  tasks.  Of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  the  majority  in  this  present  life.  Thank 
Heaven  there  are  those  "  born  under  sin,"  bred  to  this  ser- 
vice, who  somehow  have  achieved  the  moral  freedom  of  the 
world,  whether  by  a  great  price  which  they  themselves  have 
paid  for  it,   or  by  the  grace  of  others  who   have  redeemed 


6o  The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

them  from  their  servitude  with  patient  love,  or  broken  its 
inveterate  bonds  with  sudden  force,  and  carried  them  away 
as  with  a  conqueror's  might  to  make  them  sharers  of  their 

joy ! 

The  freedom  of  the  will,  as  it  was  formerly  conceived,  is 
now  a  doctrine  that  has  little  reverence  among  the  philosophi- 
cal and  scientific.     Of  the  doctrine  of  the  necessitarians,  as 
it  was  formerly  held,  the  same  thing  can  be  said  with  equal 
truth.     The  force  of  circumstance  is  seen  to  be  of  less  im- 
portance   than    the   force    of   character   in   determining   the 
choices   of  the  will.     The  range   of   deliberate   choice  has 
been   much  narrowed   by  the  psychologists,  who  have  suc- 
ceeded the  metaphysicians  in  the  study  of  these  matters,  and 
with  much  more  satisfactory  results.     And  even  where  there 
is  deliberation  there   is   less  frequently  that  effort,  or  even 
the  recollection  of  it,  which  is  commonly  illusory,  which  our 
traditional   conceptions    have    held  to    be  inseparable   from 
genuine  moral  actions.     "The  immense  majority  of  human 
decisions,"    says    Professor   James,   "are    decisions    without 
effort."     And,   while   many  of    our    teachers    who    are    now 
enskyed  and  sainted,  and   some  whom  now  we  cannot  but 
revere,  would  say  that  no  decision  without  effort  is  a  moral 
decision,  the  average  scales  of  judgment  do  not  tip  that  way. 
Nothing  is  more  effortless  than  the  will's  determination  by 
the  clear  balance  of  deliberation  one  way  or  another,  unless 
it  be  that  "  reckless  and  exultant  espousal  of  an  energy  so 
little  premeditated  that  we  feel  rather  like  passive  spectators 
cheering  on  the   display  of  some  extraneous  force  than  like 
voluntary  agents,"  or  that  sudden  passage  from  an  easy  and 
careless  to  a  sober  and  strenuous  state  of  mind,  in  which  the 
right  thing,  which  just  before  seemed  quite  impossible  for  us, 
seems  as  inevitable  as  the  gravitation  of  the  planets  to  the 
sun.     "  We  know  what  it  is,"  says  Professor  James,  "  to  get 
out  of  bed  on  a  freezing  morning,  in  a  room  without  a  fire, 
and  how  the  very  vital  principle  within  us  protests   against 
the   ordeal.     Probably  most    persons    have    lain   on   certain 
mornings  for  an  hour  at  a  time,  unable  to  brace  themselves 


The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  6i 

to  the  resolve.  We  think  how  late  we  shall  be,  how  the 
duties  of  the  day  will  suffer.  We  say :  '  I  must  get  up. 
This  is  ignominious,'  etc.  But  still  the  warm  couch  feels 
too  delicious,  the  cold  outside  too  cruel;  and  resolution 
faints  away,  and  postpones  itself  again  and  again  just  as  it 
seemed  on  the  verge  of  bursting  into  resistance  and  passing 
over  into  the  decisive  act.  How  do  we  ever  get  up  under 
such  circumstances  ?  We  more  often  than  not  get  up 
without  any  struggle  or  decision  at  all.  We  suddenly  find 
that  we  have  got  up.  A  fortunate  lapse  of  consciousness 
occurs ;  we  forget  both  the  warmth  and  the  cold ;  we 
fall  into  some  revery  connected  with  the  day's  life,  in 
the  course  of  which  the  idea  flashes  across  us,  '  Hollo  ! 
I  must  lie  here  no  longer,' — an  idea  which,  at  that  lucky 
instant,  awakens  no  contradictory  or  paralyzing  sugges- 
tions, and  consequently  produces  immediately  its  appropri- 
ate effects."  Professor  James  does  not  go  on  to  say  that 
we  have  here  an  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of  a  good 
deal  of  our  moral  life,  but  I  think  he  might  have  done  so 
without  hesitation.  The  warmest  bed  imaginable  is  our  vari- 
ous self-indulgence ;  the  coldest  possible  atmosphere  is  that 
where  virtuous  action  pleads  with  us  for  realization.  The 
very  thought  of  it  chills  our  imagination  to  the  bone.  If  our 
action  had  to  be  deliberate,  should  we  ever  have  the  courage 
to  get  up  ?  That  depends  upon  the  character  of  the  persons 
whom  the  pronoun  represents.  But,  happily,  in  life's  various 
dilemma  there  is  ever  and  anon  the  momentary  lapse  from 
the  deliberative  mood;  and  the  first  thing  we  know  we  have 
got  up  and  are  going  about  the  duty  of  the  hour,  man- 
fashion,  rather  enjoying,  too,  the  nipping  and  the  eager  air. 
It  is  not  that  our  passions,  good  or  evil,  speak  for  us  while 
we  stand  by  and  wonder.  It  is  that  our  whole  self  has  acted 
spontaneously,  to  the  temporary  discomfiture  of  our  mere 
balancing  of  rival  claims.  And  the  problem  of  the  moral 
life  is,  in  good  measure,  how  to  organize  and  develop  this 
whole  self,  so  that  in  the  critical  moments  of  existence  it 
shall  throw  itself  upon  the  side  of  right  and  truth  and  love, 
and  sweep  them  on  to  victory  and  peace. 


62  The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

In  moral  theories,  for  the  most  part  the  freedom  of  the 
will  is  the  sme  qua  nan  of  moral  action,  the  indispensable 
desideratum.  But,  in  truth,  is  not  the  indispensable  desider- 
atum a  will  that  is  not  free  to  choose  the  evil  or  the  good, 
but  the  good  only, —  is  not,  in  fact,  so  much  free  to  choose 
this  as  bound  to  choose  it  by  our  whole  being's  gravitation 
to  it  with  an  irresistible  momentum?  "Know,"  said  John 
Milton,  "  that  to  be  free  is  the  same  thing  as  to  be  pious,  to 
be  wise,  to  be  temperate  and  just,  to  be  frugal  and  abstinent, 
and,  lastly,  to  be  magnanimous  and  brave  :  so  to  be  the 
opposite  of  all  these  is  the  same  as  to  be  a  slave.  .  .  .  You, 
therefore,  who  wish  to  remain  free,  either  instantly  be  wise 
or  cease  to  be  fools :  if  you  think  slavery  an  intolerable  evil, 
learn  obedience  to  reason  and  the  government  of  your- 
selves." The  diagnosis  here  is  admirable,  but  the  remedy 
for  the  disease  is  a  specific  hard  to  find.  That  freedom  of 
the  will  which  is  its  freedom  from  all  base  solicitation,  its 
liberty  to  choose  the  highest  and  the  best,  its  boundenness 
thereto,  is  not  a  freedom  that  is  a  gift  of  nature  :  it  is  a  free- 
dom that  is  an  acquisition  of  experience,  and  this  by  no 
sudden  burst  of  energy  so  much  as  by  long  processes  of  dis- 
cipline which  store  up  the  energy  which  in  moments  to 
which  Heaven  has  joined  great  issues  discharges  itself  with 
infallible  confidence  upon  the  better  side. 

"  With  a  great  price  obtained  I  this  freedom."  Sometimes 
the  price  is  paid  for  us  before  our  birth ;  and  then,  like  the 
apostle,  we  are  born  free.  Our  fathers  and  mothers,  theirs 
in  turn,  and  generations  back  of  them  have,  by  innumerable 
fidelities  of  thought  and  word  and  deed,  by  their  self-denials, 
their  frugalities,  stored  away  the  sum  which  purchases  our 
manumission  from  the  slavery  of  selfish  passions  and  impure 
desires.  Well,  this  is  a  matter  over  which  we  have  no  con- 
trol ;  and  so  you  think  perhaps  it  has  no  ethical  implications. 
As  the  wishes  of  the  French  lady  were  not  consulted  when 
she  was  born,  so  are  not  ours  how  we  are  born.  Nay ;  but,  if 
we  cannot  do  anything  for  the  how  of  our  own  birth,  we  may 
do   something  for  that   of   those  who  shall  be   born   to   us, 


TJie  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  63 

something  to  file  away  the  links  of  the  ancestral  chain,  some- 
thing to  make  the  price  that  they  will  have  to  pay  to  get  their 
freedom  that  little  less  which  may  make  all  the  difference  in 
the  world  to  them.  What  summons,  too,  is  here  for  those 
who  are  free-born  to  bear  considerately  and  compassionately 
with  those  who  are  less  fortunate,  those  who  are  bound  with 
passion's  galling  chains !  what  summons  to  such  fellow-ser- 
vice as  shall  make  their  bondage  a  less  cruel  yoke,  and  to 
such  modesty  and  gratefulness  as  are  fit  for  those  who  are 
well-born  and  have  no  conscious  price  to  pay  to  make  their 
freedom  certain  and  secure  ! 

There  are  no  freer  people  in  the  world  than  hundreds  who 
were  slaves  at  birth  to  every  possibility  of  falsehood  and  in- 
temperance and  unlicensed  passion,  while  yet  no  one  of  them 
can  say,  "  With  a  great  price  obtained  I  this  freedom."  It 
has  been  obtained  for  them  by  others.  They  have  not  paid 
the  price,  but  others  who  have  surrounded  them  with  every 
object  and  with  every  influence  that  could  make  virtue  beau- 
tiful and  attractive  for  them  and  vice  hideous  and  repellent. 
You  have  read  Ibsen's  "Ghosts,"  perhaps,  and  shuddered 
at  the  horrible  truth  to  which  it  gives  dramatic  form, —  the 
truth  of  men's  hereditary  compulsion  to  the  foulest  crimes. 
It  is  a  truth  well  worth  considering ;  and,  ghastly  as  it  is,  we 
shall  do  well  to  look  it  fairly  in  the  face.  But  there  is  other 
truth  which  is  not  less  true,  and  which  is  as  bright  as  this  is 
dark,  as  beautiful  as  this  is  horrible,  as  full  of  hope  as  this 
is  of  despair.  It  is  the  truth  that  educational  environment 
can  do  much  to  counteract  the  inheritance  of  evil  tendency. 
No  one  has  studied  the  problems  of  heredity  more  carefully 
than  Francis  Galton  ;  no  one  has  made  the  stress  of  good  or 
bad  inheritance  seem  more  inexpugnable  than  he.  But  his 
investigations  have  shown  nothing  clearer  than  that,  if  in- 
heritance is  much,  so  also  is  the  environment.  Much  that 
we  call  heredity,  he  says,  is  not  heredity,  but  the  result  of 
contact  after  birth.  That  contact  is  inclusive  of  ten  thousand 
hindrances  and  helps,  from  the  embrace  of  the  consump- 
tive mother  up  to  the  divine  benignity,  which,  in  the  face  of 


64  TJie  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

man  or  woman,  draws  the  child,  the  growing  boy  or  girl,  the 
youth  or  maid,  with  cables  stronger  than  those  which  swing 
our  mighty  bridge  in  air,  to  all  nobility.  Here  is  the  ground 
and  inspiration  of  your  kindergarten  work.  There  is  no  such 
savings-bank  as  this !  The  more  in  this,  the  less  for  prisons 
and  reformatories,  and  those  expensive  deaths  by  electricity 
to  which  Governor  Flower  thinks  the  gentlemen  of  the  press, 
intent  on  lively  matter  for  their  various  papers,  ought  not  to 
be  refused. 

But  there  are  not  only  the  free-born  and  those  whose  free- 
dom is  obtained  for  them  with  a  great  price  of  guardianship 
in  childhood :  there  are  also  those  who,  would  their  modesty 
permit,  might  say  with  the  Roman  captain,  "  With  a  great 
price  obtained  I  this  freedom,"  —  a  price  of  their  own  earning 
and  of  their  own  paying.  Good  habits  are  the  moral  earn- 
ings that  draw  compound  interest  in  the  bank  of  character, 
at  a  liberal  rate,  and  full  soon  give  the  investor  a  sum  ready 
for  an  emergency.  Long  ago  I  read  somewhere  or  heard  it 
said  that  all  habits  are  bad  habits,  meaning  that  every  action 
should  be  the  independent  outcome  of  the  rational  and  moral 
life  of  man.  If  for  a  time  this  doctrine  took  me  in  its  snare, 
I  was  long  since  converted  to  another,  that  of  the  psycholo- 
gist* who  says  :  "  Habit  is  the  enormous  fly-wheel  of  society, 
its  most  precious  conservative  agent.  The  great  thing  in  all 
education  is  to  make  our  nervous  system  our  ally  instead  of 
our  enemy.  It  is  to  fund  and  capitalize  our  acquisitions, 
and  live  at  ease  upon  the  interest  of  the  fund.  For  this 
we  must  make  habitual,  as  early  as  possible,  as  many  useful 
actions  as  we  can,  and  guard  against  the  growing  into  ways 

*  Professor  William  James,  from  whose  "  Principles  of  Psychology  "  (Henrj'  Holt  & 
Co.)  I  have  "lifted"  all  that  is  best  in  the  remainder  of  this  sermon,  as  the  quotation- 
marks  will  duly  show.  Perhaps  I  should  have  let  his  book  alone,  having  proved  before  its 
powerful  fascination  ;  but,  having  gone  to  it  for  a  special  point,  I  could  not  leave  it  till  I 
had  read  everything  in  it  that  touched  my  theme,  and  then  I  said,  "  Why  should  I  say  in 
any  poorer  fashion  what  he  has  said  so  well  ? "  Moreover,  in  his  royal  borrowing  from  Bain 
and  others,  he  had  set  me  a  brave  example.  If  my  sermon  should  send  my  hearers  and 
readers  to  Professor  James's  wonderful  book,  one  of  the  most  muscular  and  vascular,  one 
of  the  clearest  and  brightest  I  have  ever  read,  it  would  do  a  better  service  than  one  ser- 
mon out  of  a  thousand  does  ordinarily. 


TJie  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  65 

that  are  likely  to  be  disadvantageous  to  us,  as  we  should 
guard  against  the  plague.  The  more  of  the  details  of  our 
daily  life  we  can  hand  over  to  the  effortless  custody  of  habit, 
the  more  our  higher  powers  of  mind  will  be  set  free  for  their 
own  proper  work.  There  is  no  more  miserable  human  being 
than  one  in  whom  nothing  is  habitual  but  indecision,  and 
for  whom  the  beginnings  of  every  bit  of  w^ork  are  subjects 
of  express  volitional  deliberation.  Full  half  the  time  of  such 
a  man  goes  to  the  deciding  or  regretting  of  matters  which 
ought  to  be  so  ingrained  in  him  as  practically  not  to  exist 
for  his  consciousness  at  all." 

To  acquire  good  habits  is  to  earn  the  price  of  freedom  : 
and  how  are  they  to  be  acquired  ?  Some  of  the  most  admi- 
rable suggestions  that  I  know  are  those  which  Professor 
James  has  drawn  out  from  Professor  Bain's  psychology  of 
the  moral  habits.  For  one  thing,  in  the  endeavor  to  acquire 
a  new  habit  which  we  know  to  be  desirable,  or  to  get  rid  of 
one  we  know  is  hurtful  to  our  characters  and  our  perform- 
ance, "  we  must  take  care  to  launch  ourselves  with  as  strong 
and  decided  an  initiative  as  possible.  Accumulate  all  the  pos- 
sible forces  which  shall  re-enforce  the  right  motives ;  put 
yourselves  assiduously  in  conditions  that  encourage  the  new 
way ;  make  engageme?its  incompatible  zvith  the  old ;  *  ...  in 
short,  envelop  your  resolution  with  every  aid  you  know. 
This  will  give  your  new  beginning  such  a  momentum  that 
the  temptation  to  break  down  will  not  occur  as  soon  as 
it  otherwise  might ;  and  every  day  during  which  a  break- 
down is  postponed  adds  to  the  chances  of  its  not  occurring 
at  all." 

Another  admirable  suggestion  which  I  find  in  the  same 
treasury  of  psychological  ideas  is,  "  Never  suffer  an  exception 
to  occur  till  the  new  habit  is  securely  rooted  in  your  lifey  "  It 
is  necessary,  above  all  things,  in  such  a  situation,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Bain,  "  never  to  lose  a  battle.  Every  gain  on  the 
wrong  side  undoes  the  effect  of  many  conquests  on  the 
right."     "  Without  unbroken  advance,"  another  writer  says, 

*  These  Italics  are  mine. 


66  The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

"there  is  no  such  thing  as  accumulation  of  the  ethical  forces 
possible."  Hence  there  must  be  no  "tapering  off"  of  pleas- 
ant vices,  no  letting  of  ourselves  down  easily  from  perilous 
heights,  no  treating  of  our  resolution  to  break  off  the  evil 
course,  none  of  Rip  Van  Winkle's  genial  conclusions  "  not 
to  count  this  one,"  and  this,  and  this.  The  teacher  I  am 
following  formulates  another  maxim,  than  which  for  the 
earning  of  good  habits  I  have  not  found  a  better,  nor  one 
that  my  own  experience  more  happily  or  painfully  confirms. 
It  is  :  "  Seize  the  very  first  possible  opportwiity  to  act  on  every 
resolution  you  make,  and  on  every  emotional  prompting  you  may 
experience  in  the  direction  of  the  habits  you  aspire  to  gain.  .  .  . 
No  matter  how  full  a  reservoir  of  maxims  one  may  possess, 
and  no  matter  how  good  one's  sentiments  may  be,  if  one  has 
not  taken  advantage  of  every  concrete  opportunity  to  act^ 
one's  character  may  remain  entirely  unaffected  for  the  better." 
The  good  intentions  with  which  hell  is  paved  proverbially 
are  good  intentions  that  have  never  "lost "  because  they  have 
never  had  "the  name  of  action."  "A  character,"  says  John 
Stuart  Mill,  "is  a  completely  fashioned  will";  and  a  will,  in 
the  sense  in  which  he  means  it,  is,  we  are  told,  "  an  aggre- 
gate of  tendencies  to  act  in  a  firm  and  prompt  and  definite 
wa}^  upon  all  the  principal  emergencies  of  life.  A  tendency 
to  act  only  becomes  effectively  ingrained  in  us  in  proportion 
to  the  uninterrupted  frequency  with  which  our  actions  actu- 
ally occur.  There  is  no  more  contemptible  type  of  human 
character  than  that  of  the  nerveless  sentimentalist  and 
dreamer,  who  spends  his  life  in  weltering  in  a  sea  of  sensibil- 
ity and  emotion,  and  who  never  does  a  manly  concrete  deed." 
"  The  habit  of  excessive  novel-reading  and  theatre-going  will 
produce  true  monsters  in  this  line,"  says  our  professor;  "and 
even  the  habit  of  excessive  indulgence  in  music,  for  those 
who  are  neither  performers  themselves  nor  musically  gifted 
enough  to  take  it  in  a  purely  intellectual  way,  has  probably 
a  relaxing  effect  upon  the  character."  And  now  I  will  give 
you  for  what  it  is  worth  his  final  maxim  :  ^''Keep  the  faculty 
of  effort  alive  in  you  by  a  little  gratuitous   effort  every  day. 


TJic  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  6y 

That  is,  be  systematically  ascetic  or  heroic  in  little  unneces- 
sary points ;  do  every  day  or  two  something  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  you  would  rather  not  do  it.  .  .  .  Asceticism 
of  this  sort  is  like  the  insurance  which  a  man  pays  on  his 
house  and  goods.  ...  If  the  fire  does  come,  his  having  paid 
it  will  be  his  salvation  from  ruin.  So  with  the  man  who  has 
daily  inured  himself  ...  to  energetic  volition  and  self-denial 
in  unnecessary  things.  He  will  stand  like  a  tower  when 
everything  rocks  around  him,  and  when  his  softer  fellow- 
mortals  are  winnowed  like  chaff  in  the  blast."  This  doctrine 
has,  I  well  remember,  the  confirmation  of  John  Stuart  Mill's 
opinion,  always  careful  and  serene.  I  had  myself  supposed 
that  one  had  little  need  to  manufacture  opportunities  for 
self-denial  or  strenuous  volition,  that  they  abounded  in  the 
most  ordinary  lives.  I  had  supposed  that,  if  one  didn't  meet 
them,  he  was  dodging  them.  I  had  imagined  that,  if  one 
attended  manfully  to  the  necessary  self-denials  of  his  con- 
dition, he  would  find  exercise  enough  to  brace  himself  for 
any  possible  encounter.  But,  as  I  have  said,  I  give  you  the 
professor's  suggestion  for  what  it  is  worth.  You  can  take  it 
home,  and  weigh  it  carefully. 

These  are  the  ethics  of  the  physiological  psychologist  who 
is  much  contemned,  but  they  are  as  clear  and  stern  as  any 
that  I  know.  "  Could  the  young  but  realize,"  he  says,  "how 
soon  they  will  become  mere  walking  bundles  of  habits,  they 
would  give  more  heed  to  their  conduct  while  in  the  plastic 
state.  We  are  spinning  our  own  fates,  good  or  evil,  and 
never  to  be  undone.  Every  smallest  stroke  of  virtue  or  of 
vice  leaves  its  never  so  little  scar.  The  drunken  Rip  Van 
Winkle  excuses  himself  for  every  fresh  dereliction  by  saying, 
'  I  won't  count  this  time.'  He  may  not  count  it,  but  it  is 
being  counted  none  the  less.  Down  among  his  nerve-cells 
and  fibres  the  molecules  are  counting  it,  registering  and  stor- 
ing it  up  to  be  used  against  him  when  the  next  temptation 
comes."  And  as  it  is  with  every  base  consent,  so  is  it  with 
every  brave  resistance  of  our  will.  That,  also,  is  so  much 
earned,    so    much  saved,   so    much  invested    to    accumulate 


68  The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

capital  and  interest  for  the  sum  with  which  our  moral  free- 
dom must  be  bought,  and  with  no  devil's  mortgage  that  can 
be  foreclosed  against  us  in  some  great  day  of  account. 

But  the  whole  story  of  the  price  of  moral  freedom  is  not 
told  in  this  delineation  of  the  way  in  which  good  habits  are 
confirmed,  and  make  spontaneous  and  effortless  the  majority 
of  our  decisions  in  the  moral  sphere.  There  is  an  intellect- 
ual element  in  the  complete  affair  which  is  of  great  signifi- 
cance. "When  the  will  is  healthy,"  we  are  told,  "the  vision 
must  be  right,  and  the  action  must  obey  the  vision's  lead." 
The  vision  must  be  right !  That  is  the  aspect  of  the  matter 
we  have  recognized  in  the  motto  of  our  Church, —  "  The  truth 
shall  make  you  free."  To  do  the  right,  we  must  be  able  to 
see  things  as  they  are.  And  that  we  cannot  do  while  we  are 
as  full  of  prejudice  as  we  often,  as  we  generally,  are.  The 
price  of  freedom  is  the  surrender  of  our  prejudice,  the  con- 
tinual cherishing  of  the  feeling  that  we  may,  after  all,  be 
wrong,  the  persistent  search  for  what  is  actually  true,  not  for 
mere  confirmation  of  the  opinions  which  for  one  reason  or  an- 
other we  desire  to  hold.  Aiidi  alteram  partem  I  "  Hear  the 
other  side  ! "  Read  the  other  side  !  Study  the  great  masters 
of  science,  and  so  cultivate  the  scientific  temper ;  and  then,  if 
you  can,  carry  it  over  into  the  realm  of  politics  and  the  realm 
of  theology  and  the  judgments  of  the  social  world. 

"Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish";  and  they 
still  perish,  if  they  are  not  obedient  to  the  heavenly  vision, 
once  it  has  been  clearly  seen.  For  such  obedience  of  the 
moral  will  the  spontaneity  of  habits,  formed  by  our  persistent 
choices  of  the  higher  things,  is  all  we  need.  Be  resolutely 
bent  to  see  things  as  they  are ;  launch  yourself  with  as  strong 
and  decided  an  initiative  as  possible ;  never  suffer  an  ex- 
ception to  occur  till  the  good  habit  is  securely  rooted  in 
your  life  ;  seize  the  first  possible  opportunity  to  act  on  every 
noble  resolution ;  suspect  yourself  if  any  day  goes  by  and 
there  is  nothing  hard  to  do  and  nothing  sweet  and  pleasant 
to  be  given  up, —  do  all  these  things,  and  few  occasions  will 
arise  which  shall  not  find  you  armed  and  mailed  and  ready 


TJie  Price  of  Moral  Freedom  69 

for  the  battle.  Few ;  and  yet  no  antecedent  preparation 
can  make  us  sure  that  no  temptation  can  assail  us  which  our 
force  of  habit  cannot  easily  disarm.  And  what  then  ?  Then 
is  the  time  and  place  for  that  "essential  achievement  of  the 
will  when  it  is  most  voluntary, —  to  attcjid  to  a  difficult 
object  and  hold  it  fast  before  the  mind."  "A  moment's 
thought  is  passion's  passing  knell." 

"  When  Duty  whispers  low, '  Thou  must,' 
The  youth  replies,  *  I  can,'  " 

if  he  has  the  force,  the  energy,  the  strength  of  will,  the 
sturdiness  of  effort,  "  to  hear  the  still,  small  voice  unflinch- 
ingly ;  when  the  awful  mandate  comes,  looks  at  its  face,  con- 
sents to  its  presence,  clings  to  it,  affirms  it,  in  spite  of  the  host 
of  exciting  images  which  rise  in  revolt  against  it  and  would 
expel  it  from  the  mind."  "  It  must  be  held  steadily  before 
the  mind  until  \\  fills  the  mind,"  and  then  the  victory  is  won. 
For  then  as  to  a  banner  lifted  up,  as  to  the  slogan  which 
brings  clansmen  trooping  over  burn  and  fell,  come  swarming 
all  the  natural  allies  of  virtue  to  her  hard  defence.  Only 
attention  to  the  thing  that  must  be  do7ie  !  Yes,  only  that.  But, 
in  the  effort  after  that,  body  and  soul  have  sometimes  parted 
company,  and  in  the  joy  of  the  successful  enterprise  it  has 
seemed  to  some  as  if  the  heavens  opened,  and  they  saw  the 
face  of  God. 

"With  a  great  price  obtained  I  this  freedom."  So  every 
church  and  every  state,  if  they  could  find  a  voice,  and  every 
man,  might  say,  who  has  deliberately  attained  unto  a  freedom 
that  is  no  semblance,  but  a  divine  reality.  Nor  is  the  price 
too  much  for  what  it  brings.  It  is  a  great  sum,  and  it  cannot 
be  quickly  earned  even  by  the  most  diligent  and  strenuous 
of  men.  But  there  are  many  ways  in  which  a  little  of  it  can 
be  earned,  and  many  mickles  make  a  muckle  here  as  in  the 
heaping  up  of  poorer  stuff.  And  remember  that  the  price 
is  not  all  required  at  once ;  for  the  most  part,  only  a  little  of 
it  at  a  time,  though  now  and  then  such  an  amount  as  beggars  . 
us  outright.     God  give  us  grace,  we  helping  him  as  best  we 


70  The  Price  of  Moral  Freedom 

can,  to  meet  the  uttermost  demand.  And,  whether  we  were 
born  free  or  have  obtained  our  freedom  at  a  great  expense, 
let  us  not  be  content  with  our  own  liberty,  but  remember 
those  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them,  and  work  and  strive,  if 
haply  we  may  hasten  somewhat  their  deliverance  from  the 
bondage  of  corruption  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God. 


ORTHODOXY:  WHAT  IS  IT? 


The  famous  lecture  upon  "Snakes  in  Ireland,"  which 
began,  "There  are  no  snakes  in  Ireland,"  furnishes  me  with 
an  admirable  model  for  m}^  discourse  this  morning.  There 
is  no  orthodoxy,  no  standard  of  belief,  to  which  we  can  ap- 
peal, and  say,  "This  is  the  orthos  doxa,'' — i.e.,  the  straight, 
the  right,  the  correct  opinion,  from  which  any  divergence  is 
heresy.  If  there  is  any,  it  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church ;  and  all  Protestant  churches  are  equally 
heretics  in  comparison  with  that,  for  they  all  alike  deny  that 
which  constitutes  its  essential  character, —  its  assumption  of 
infallibility,  and  its  identification  of  the  seat  of  this  infalli- 
bility with  the  papal  throne.  Whether  there  is  any  virtue  in 
this  "  If,"  we  shall  see  as  we  go  on  with  our  discussion.  In 
the  mean  time,  the  actuality  and  possibility  of  orthodoxy 
have  both  a  theoretical  and  an  historical  aspect ;  and  in 
either  they  are  equally  unreal.  The  theoretical  aspect  is 
not  an  isolated  one  in  modern  life.  It  is  of  a  piece  with 
the  whole  tendency  of  modern  thought,  of  which  nothing  is 
more  characteristic  than  its  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of 
human  knowledge  and  the  relativity  of  all  natural  organisms, 
human  relations,  morals,  characters,  and  arts.  The  former 
tendency  was  to  the  absolute  in  everything,  to  absolute  dis- 
tinctions in  everything.  Everything  was  set  off  from  every- 
thing else  as  absolutely  different  from  it.  We  had  God  and 
man,  matter  and  spirit,  good  men  and  bad,  heaven  and  hell, 
truth  and  error,  true  religions  and  false,  natural  and  re- 
vealed ;  while  in  politics  it  must  be  a  monarchy  or  a  repub- 
lic, and  one  party  must  be  wholly  right,  the  other  wholly 
wrong, —  our  side  the  cream  of  cream,  the  other  knaves  and 


72  Orthodoxy :    What  is  it? 

fools ;  and  in  art,  between  the  Classic  and  Romantic,  there 
must  be  no  half-way  :  it  must  be  realistic  or  idealistic,  one 
thing  or  the  other ;  and  so  on  through  the  whole  range  of 
natural  and  human  life. 

Nothing  is  clearer  in  the  range  of  modern  thought  than 
that  it  has  completely  broken  with  these  hard  and  fast  divi- 
sions, separations,  and  antagonisms.  In  the  duels  of  the  arts, 
the  sciences,  the  religions,  and  the  men  of  force  and  genius 
who  have  shaped  all  these,  Hamlet  and  Laertes  are  con- 
tinually changing  swords.  There  is  nothing  fixed  and  per- 
manent. The  old  Greek  philosophers,  who  said  that  every- 
thing is  flux,  seem  to  have  had  the  right  of  it.  Down  among 
the  natural  forces  there  is  a  new  reading  of  them  all,  which 
substitutes  a  relative  for  an  absolute  interpretation.  The 
old  cosmology  said  that  the  world  was  made  and  finished  in 
six  days ;  the  new  cosmology,  that  it  has  been  nearer  six 
million  years  a-making,  and  that  it  is  not  finished  yet.  Even 
the  children  in  the  Sunday-schools  are  beginning  to  question 
whether  God  "  can  make  a  mountain  all  to  once  "  ;  and  Tyn- 
dall,  asking  who  chiselled  these  mighty  and  picturesque 
masses,  finds  the  real  sculptor  in  the  all-conquering  sun. 
"And  it  is  he  who,  acting  through  the  ages,  will  finally  lay  low 
these  mighty  monuments,  rolling  them  gradually  seaward, 
'sowing  the  seeds  of  continents  to  be,'  so  that  the  people  of 
an  older  earth  may  see  mould  spread  and  corn  wave  over 
the  hidden  rocks  which  at  this  moment  bear  up  the  weight 
of  the  Jungfrau  " ;  so  that  there  is  not  the  least  exaggeration 
in  Tennyson's  stanza  where  he  sings  :  — 

"The  hills  are  shadows,  and  they  flow 

From  form  to  form,  and  nothmg  stands ; 
They  melt  like  mist,  the  solid  lands, 
Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go." 

Pass  from  the  geological  to  the  biological  world,  and  we  have 
the  same  substitution  of  a  relative  for  an  absolute  idea :  the 
transmutation  of  species,  form  flowing  into  form,  instead  of 
the  old  idea  that  God  made  each  separate  kind  outright ;  the 


Orthodoxy :    What  is  it  ?  73 

creation  of  man  not  an  event,  but  a  process  involving  ages 
measured  by  hundreds  of  millenniums.    And  man  once  made, 
or  at  least  fairly  on  his  feet  and  "going  to  be  created," — 
like  the  dramatic  Adam  in  the  mediaeval  play, —  how  relative 
are  the  distinctions  in  his  character  and  in  the  matters  that 
concern  his  life  and  are  the  fruits  of  his  activity !     For  the 
two  kinds  of  men   the   old  thinking  gave  us,  one  kind  or- 
dained to  heaven  and  the  other  kind  to  hell,  we  have  about 
some  1,400,000,000  kinds  at  any  given  time, —  as  many  kinds 
as  there   are  people   in   the  world.     The  worst  have   some- 
thing good  in  them,  the  best  are  not  all  good.     And  what  is 
best,  and  what  is  worst,  and  what  are  good  and  bad  ?     The 
difference  is  a  relative  difference.     The  bad  is  an  excess  of 
good,  the   exaggeration  of  something  which   is  not  intrinsi- 
cally bad.    Conscience  tells  men  that  they  must  do  the  right. 
It  does  not  tell  them  what  it  is.     And,  in  truth,  it  is  not  the 
same  yesterday  and   tO:day  and   forever.     Time   was  when 
slavery  was  better  than  butchery,  and    so    relatively  good ; 
when  polygamy  was  better  than  the  rage  of  indiscriminate 
lust ;  and  so  on.     Or  take  the  great  religions  of  the  world  : 
they  are  no  longer  good  or  bad,  one  good  and  all  the  others 
bad.     They  are   all  good  and  bad,  each    mixed  of  various 
yarn.     And  so,  too,  with  the  politics.     There  is   no  system 
absolutely  good  for  every  time  and  place.     The  divine  right 
of  kings  is  certainly  an  anachronism  in  our  time  ;  and  in  the 
Imperial  German  play  we  seem  to  see  the  young  emperor, 
far  crazier  than  Hamlet,  addressing  the  headless  ghost  of 
Charles  I.  of  England,  and  saying,  "  I'll  follow  thee."     But 
the  divine  right  of  kings  was  not  always  an  absurdity.     As 
against  rival  chiefs  and  barons,  it  signalized  the  necessity  of 
central  power.     And  in  the  comparative  politics  of  modern 
times  we  must  not  be  the  dupes  of  words.     England  is  mo- 
narchical, and  America  is  republican  ;  but  our  government 
is  more  conservative  than  that  of  England,  in  the  judgment 
of  Sir  Henry  Maine,  the  first  political  student  of  his  time. 
But  there  are  other  relative  considerations  less  soothing  to 
our  self-esteem.     Good  Queen  Victoria  may  be  Queen  Log, 


74  Orthodoxy :    What  is  it  ? 

and  we  may  depreciate  the  assiduity  with  which  her  sure 
decay  and  general  uselessness  are  overlaid  with  gold.  But 
is  such  a  gubernatorial  or  senatorial  Stork  as  we  sometimes 
have  on  our  side  of  the  puddle  so  much  better  ?  and,  in 
view  of  such  gigantic  appropriations  of  the  people's  money 
to  the  benefit  of  private  corporations,  and  the  giving  away  of 
great  franchises  of  travel  which  could  be  sold  for  enormous 
sums,  as  we  have  seen  of  late,  is  it  certain  that  the  gilded  log 
is  more  expensive  than  our  monumental  brass  ? 

But  these  random  illustrations  of  the  relativity  of  modern 
thought,  its  substitution  of  modification  and  gradation  for 
the  hard  and  fast,  may  easily  be  multiplied  too  far.  They 
are  so  numerous  that  it  would  be  strange  if  the  province  of 
theology  constituted  an  exception  to  their  rule.  The  history 
of  thought  has  furnished  no  more  gross  example  of  the  ab- 
solute method  than  the  general  conception  of  orthodoxy  as 
something  believed  everywhere  and  always  and  by  all  who 
have  any  claim  to  be  regarded  as  members  of  the  Christian 
Church.  And  it  may  seem  to  some  of  you  that  the  disinte- 
gration of  this  conception  is  out  of  all  proportion  with  the 
knowledge  of  the  course  of  Christian  thought  as  it  has  de- 
veloped from  its  beginning  on  the  steep  hillside  of  Nazareth 
to  the  present  time.  And,  indeed,  it  is  so.  It  is  so  because 
of  that  law  which  Lecky  elaborated  in  his  "  History  of 
Rationalism  in  Europe";  namely,  that,  while  conscious  op- 
position may  confirm  the  old  opinion,  the  general  enlarge- 
ment of  the  mind  by  processes  of  thought  allows,  compels, 
the  old  opinion  to  drop  out  of  it.  One  need  never  have 
attended  to  the  course  of  Christian  history,  and  noted  what 
a  history  of  orthodoxy  becoming  heresy  and  heresy  becom- 
ing orthodoxy  it  has  been,  while,  if  he  has  been  profoundly 
affected  by  the  stream  of  modern  thought  and  its  general 
transition  from  the  absolute  to  the  relative,  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible that  the  absolutism  of  orthodoxy  should  have  remained 
for  him  unaffected,  that  he  should  not  come  to  feel  that  here 
also  we  have  no  definite  finality,  but  a  sliding  scale,  marking 
one  height  at  one  time  or  place  and   another  at  another,  so 


Orthodoxy:    What  is  it?  75 

that  the  pride   of  orthodoxy  is  much   abashed,  if  it  be  not 
humbled  to  the  ground. 

And  now  if  any  one,  so  minded  to  include  the  absolutism 
of  orthodoxy  with  that  of  all  the  other  absolutisms  which 
have  abdicated  in  favor  of  the  relative  principle,  should  reso- 
lutely go  to  work  to  study  Christian  history,  he  would  find  at 
every  stage  of  its  advance  or  retrogression  the  amplest  con- 
firmation of  his  anticipatory  intuition,  would  '"  see  what  he 
foresaw  "  as  clear  as  winter  stars. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  province  of  theology  would 
be  the  last  to  keep  itself  uninvaded  by  the  relative  spirit,  so 
industriously  had  it  deceived  itself  with  the  conviction  that 
it  was  "  a  garden  sealed,"  a  province  differing  not  in  degree 
only,  but  in  kind,  from  every  other  in  the  realm  of  thought. 
But,  while  theology  was  musing,  the  fire  of  criticism  burned, 
at  first  tended  by  Niebuhr  and  Arnold  in  the  field  of  his- 
tory, from  which  it  caught  in  time  the  palings  of  the  theo- 
logical enclosure  ;  and  we  may  now  say  that  the  whole  field 
has  been  pretty  much  burned  over,  and  that  everywhere,  in 
the  place  of  the  old  absolute  growths  that  stood  so  thick 
together,  the  principles  of  relativity,  of  variation,  transmuta- 
tion, adaptation  to  environment,  and  so  on,  are  springing  up 
into  a  fresh  and  vigorous  life. 

The  assumption  of  orthodoxy  is  that  it  has  always  been  the 
creed  of  Christendom.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment exhibits  the  infant  Church  torn  by  conflicting  doc- 
trines to  a  degree  which  has  not  been  surpassed  at  any 
subsequent  time.  Odium  theologicum  is  not  an  extinct  va- 
riety ;  but  not  even  the  New  York  Observer  often  attains 
to  such  a  genial  latitude  of  abuse  as  the  New  Testament 
conservatives  and  radicals.  That  the  heresy  of  one  century 
is  the  orthodoxy  of  the  next  is  a  commonplace  with  students 
of  these  things.  For  orthodoxy  to  become  heresy  is  a  less 
common  or  less  obvious  experience.  Yet  nothing  can  be  surer 
than  that  the  New  Testament  orthodoxy,  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
Jerusalem  apostles,  headed  by  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus, 
though  it  seemed  to  be  impregnably  intrenched  against  the 


^6  Orthodoxy :    What  is  it? 

Pauline  innovation,  in  the  course  of  three  centuries  became 
the  heresy  of  the  Ebionites,  the  most  detestable  of  any  in  the 
eyes  of  those  who,  holding  to  the  heresies  of  the  Early  Church, 
had  come  into  the  orthodox  succession.  From  time  to  time 
there  has  been  a  great  deal  of  talk  in  Christendom  about  the 
Primitive  Church  and  of  devotion  to  its  ideals.  But  the 
ideals  actually  followed  have  not  been  so  very  primitive. 
With  Roman  Catholics  and  Episcopalians  they  have  been 
those  of  the  Post-apostolic  Church,  with  a  care,  even  at 
that,  not  to  go  back  too  far ;  while  those  who  have  gone  back 
to  the  New  Testament  have  not  gone  back  to  the  primitive 
and  orthodox  party  which  is  there  revealed,  but  to  the  party 
obviously  and  confessedly  heretical.  Any  Jewish  church  of 
our  own  time  is  nearer  to  the  primitive  Christian  orthodoxy 
of  Jerusalem  than  any  form  of  modern  Christianity  that 
vaunts  its  orthodoxy.  But,  in  allowing  that  there  was  a 
primitive  Christian  orthodoxy,  do  I  not  break  the  force  of  my 
general  thesis,  "  There  is  no  orthodoxy  "  ?  Not  in  the  sense 
in  which  that  was  declared  :  There  is  no  standard  .of  belief 
to  which  we  can  appeal  as  the  orthos  doxa, —  the  straight,  the 
right,  the  correct  opinion  for  all  time.  There  is  in  the 
New  Testament  a  party  claiming  to  be  orthodox.  But  the 
New  Testament  does  not  support  its  claim.  It  leaves  it 
standing  side  by  side  with  the  way  that  some  called  heresy, 
and  it  was  not  the  New  Testament  that  decided  in  the 
course  of  three  centuries  that  this  way  should  be  called 
orthodox.  And,  if  the  standards  of  the  Jerusalem  apostles 
should  be  accepted  as  the  final  standards  of  orthodoxy,  there 
would  not  be  an  orthodox  Christian  in  the  world  to-day. 

It  was  a  losing  game  for  the  Judaizing  Christians  as  soon 
as  Paul's  "  one  heart  against  the  flesh  of  all  mankind  "  had 
been  flung  forth  with  all  the  imaginative  passion  of  the  man ; 
and  in  the  course  of  some  three  centuries  the  game  was 
wholly  lost,  and  Jewish  Christianity  ceased  to  be  a  factor  in 
the  onward  movement  of  events.  But,  even  while  the  first 
debate  went  on,  others  became  more  prominent,  and  divided 
the  victorious  party  into  sects  and  factions,  great  and  small. 


Orthodoxy :    What  is  it?  yj 

The  subject  of  this  new  series  of  debates  was  the  nature  of 
Jesus,  called  the  Christ :  Was  he  God  or  man,  or  God  and 
man  ?  and,  if  God  and  man,  what  was  the  adjustment  in  his 
nature  of  the  human  and  divine  ?  One  council  after  another 
closed  and  reopened  and  then  closed  again  these  great 
debates.  And  there  was  nothing  in  the  character  of  these 
councils  to  suggest  that  special  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
which  is  claimed  for  them  by  the  ecclesiastical  sentimental- 
ists of  the  modern  world.  They  involved  a  great  deal  of 
politics,  but  they  were  not  so  well  managed  as  a  mid-winter 
convention  by  one-half.  Harmony  there  was  none.  And  I 
am  sorry  to  say  that  the  worst  of  all  the  councils  was  that 
council  of  Ephesus  in  449  (which  has  been  called  the  Rob- 
ber Council  with  good  reason),  and  which  strenuously  sup- 
ported that  doctrine  of  the  one  nature  of  Christ  which  Mr. 
Beecher  and  his  successor,  Dr.  Abbott,  have  defended  in  our 
own  time.  When  the  Bishop  of  Seleucia  said,  "  I  worship 
the  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  two  persons,"  the  monks  from 
Alexandria  cried  out :  "  Burn  him  alive  !  Tear  him  asunder  ! 
As  he  divided,  so  let  him  be  divided  !  .  .  .  Drive  out,  burn, 
massacre,  all  who  hold  two  natures ! "  The  mails  were 
tampered  with  ;*  and  a  letter  from  Leo,  Bishop  of  Rome,  was 
quietly  suppressed, —  the  only  thing  that  was  done  quietly  in 
the  council,  except  the  introducing  of  forged  passages  into  the 
platform  as  finally  adopted.  When  the  final  vote  was  taken, 
"  a  furious  multitude  of  monks  and  soldiers  burst  into  the 
church,  driving  the  terrified  bishops  into  the  corners  and  under 
the  tables  and  seats,  from  which  they  were  not  suffered  to 
emerge  till  they  had  promised  to  sign  a  blank  paper,  which 
afterward  was  filled  out."  Flavian,  the  Patriarch  of  Constan- 
tinople, whose  deposition  it  secured,  was  so  beaten,  kicked, 
and  stamped  on  by  the  Patriarch  of  Alexandria,  that  he  died 
of  his  injuries;  and  those  holding  Mr.  Beecher's  and  Dr. 
Abbott's  one-nature  opinion  thought  that  his  heresy  of  the 
two  natures  had  perished  with  him,  but  it  had   not.     Only 

*  Here  and  elsewhere  the  form  of  this  narration  may  have  been  influenced  unduly  by 
current  events. 


y^  Orthodoxy:    What  is  it? 

three  years  later,  an  emperor  less  favorable  to  Alexandria 
having  come  to  the  fore,  the  council  of  Chalcedon  reversed 
the  action  of  the  council  of  Ephesus ;  and  the  doctrine  of 
Eutyches  and  Mr.  Beecher  has  been  heretical  from  that  day 
to  this.  But  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  council  which 
managed  this  business  was  a  mob  hardly  less  savage  than 
that  of  Ephesus.  Nevertheless,  it  determined  the  orthodoxy 
of  Christendom  from  that  time  to  this,  so  far  as  orthodoxy 
can  be  determined  by  the  majority  vote  of  a  general  council 
of  the  Church,  so  long  as  it  is  unrepealed.  And  how  did  it 
determine  it?  Very  much  as  if  a  Republican  or  a  Demo- 
cratic convention  should  declare  itself  at  once  for  free  coin- 
age and  sound  money,  for  the  McKinley  bill  and  a  tariff  for 
revenue  only.  Very  much  as  the  committee  appointed  to 
report  on  the  revision  of  the  Westminster  Confession  have 
advised ;  namely,  that  the  doctrines  of  Calvin  and  Arminius, 
—  election  and  free  will, —  doctrines  which  two  centuries  and 
one  century  ago  divided  men  as  light  from  darkness  and  as 
heaven  from  hell,  be  arbitrarily  joined  together.  It  took  the 
two  opposing  and  repellent  propositions,  and  declared  them 
to  be  one ;  and  well  may  an  orthodox  historian  say  of  the 
resulting  creed,  "  By  its  repetition  of  positive  and  negative 
propositions,  its  perpetual  assertion  and  then  denial  of  its 
propositions,  the  mystery  of  the  doctrine  is  presented,  as  it 
were,  in  hieroglyphics,  and  as  if  to  confound  the  under- 
standing." 

But  the  main  thing  for  you  to  notice  in  all  this  is  that, 
even  allowing  the  council  of  Chalcedon  to  have  determined 
the  orthodox  doctrine  of  Christ,  with  its  Hegelian  union  of 
contradictories, — 

"  Chip,  chop,  chain, 
Give  a  thing,  and  take  it  back  again," — 

there  had  been  no  orthodoxy  in  this  particular  until  then. 
For  more  than  two  centuries  after  the  death  of  Jesus  it 
remained  doubtful  whether  he  was  to  be  regarded  as  a 
human  or  a  divine  being;  and  for  another  century  how  he 


Orthodoxy :    What  is  it  ?  79 

was  at  once  God  and  man  was  still  undecided.  Thousands 
since  then  have  quietly  lapsed  into  the  heretical  vein,  and 
have  been  none  the  worse  for  it.  Some,  proud  of  their 
orthodoxy,  have  been  convicted  of  the  heresy  of  Eutyches, 
anathematized  at  Chalcedon.  It  was  so  with  Frederick,  now 
Bishop,  Huntington  when  he  left  our  communion  for  the 
Episcopalian.  He  thought  he  was  all  right,  and  the  general 
ignorance  of  the  clergy  did  not  enlighten  him.  But  Dr. 
Hedge,  who  knew  whereof  he  spoke,  quietly  informed  him 
that  he  was  an  heretical  Monophysite  of  the  school  of  Eu- 
tyches, and  that  his  Trinity  was  a  Quaternity.  When  the 
same  charge  was  brought  against  Mr.  Beecher,  he  knew  not 
"the  school  of  Eutyches,"  but  protested  that  he  was  edu- 
cated at  Litchfield  Academy  and  Amherst  College. 

Meantime  there  had  been  much  discussion  as  to  whether 
Mary  was  theotokos^  the  mother  of  God,  and  entitled  to  be  so 
called;  and  the  decision. was  in  the  afBrmative.  Of  all  these 
great  controversies,  the  Eastern  Church  was  the  centre, 
though  the  excitement  of  them  ramified  to  every  quarter  of 
the  Christian  world  as  it  was  then  defined.  In  a  general 
way,  it  was  characteristic  of  the  East  to  take  things  by  the 
far  end  and  of  the  West  to  take  them  by  the  near  end,  and 
so  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  characteristic  controversy 
of  the  West  would  have  Man  and  not  God  for  its  subject, 
would  be  on  human  nature ;  and  it  was  so.  Augustine  and 
Pelagius  were  the  champions  of  the  ring,  and  Augustine 
triumphed  gloriously.  Or  shall  we  say  ingloriously  ?  He 
did  not  triumph  without  imperial  aid  ;  and  the  doctrine  which 
he  formulated  and  which  has  been  nominally  orthodox  from 
then  till  now  was  the  most  frightful  incubus  that  ever  sat 
upon  the  breast  of  Christendom,  making  it  breathe  a  heavy, 
troubled  breath.  It  was  a  doctrine  at  which  even  the  fierce 
TertuUian  two  centuries  before  would  have  drawn  back  in 
hate  and  fear, —  a  doctrine  which,  so  far  from  being  ortho- 
dox, had  been  almost  non-existent  from  the  time  of  Paul  to 
that  of  Augustine, —  nearly  four  centuries.  It  was  a  doctrine 
which,  for  one  reason  and  another,  the  Church  found  it  so 


8o  Orthodoxy:    What  is  it? 

hard  to  hold  —  total  depravity,  the  universal  imputation  of 
Adam's  sin  —  that  it  fell  into  general  disuse;  and,  when 
revived  by  Luther  outside  and  by  Pascal  inside  the  Church, 
it  appeared  as  a  new  thing  and  monstrously  heretical.  The 
late  Father  Hecker  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Paulists  in  New 
York  used  to  gird  at  it  as  if  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  had 
never  taken  any  stock  in  it,  as  if  it  were  a  purely  Protestant 
affair;  and  he  contended  that  it  was  a  miserable  basis  for 
self-government,  that  self-government  presupposes  the  gen- 
eral healthiness  of  human  nature.  And  it  does ;  though 
sometimes,  I  must  confess,  it  looks  as  if  the  presupposition 
were  not  justified  by  the  facts,  our  politics  are  so  bad.  But 
that  is  because  the  people  generally  are  so  innocent  and 
unsuspicious,  and  allow  themselves  to  be  led  like  sheep  to 
the  slaughter  by  the  demagogues  who  promise  them  whatever 
they  desire. 

Well,  here  was  the  fifth  century  well  advanced,  and  still 
there  was  much  unsettled  ;  and  what  seemed  settled  forever 
would  keep  on  getting  unsettled.  And  out  of  this  state  of 
things  arose  the  Catholic  Church.  It  was  a  natural  evolu- 
tion from  the  Church  of  the  Apostles.  The  basis  of  their 
fellowship  was  repentance  and  renewal  of  the  moral  life. 
But  very  soon  the  importance  of  belief  came  to  be  more  than 
the  importance  of  a  holy  life.  And,  if  there  must  be  uniform- 
ity of  belief,  there  must  be  one  church  to  declare  and  to  en- 
force that  uniformity.  It  came  in  answer  to  the  call ;  and, 
characteristically,  its  first  great  triumph  was  over  the  moral 
sense  of  a  great  body  of  believers  who  demanded  moral 
purity  of  the  bishop  and  the  priest,  and  declared  that  with- 
out it  their  functions  were  made  void.  This  would  never  do. 
The  function  must  be  independent  of  the  man,  and  it  was  so 
ordained ;  and  Dante,  eight  centuries  later,  furnished  inter- 
esting illustrations  of  the  working  of  the  principle  in  his  sev- 
eral popes  in  hell,— officially  immaculate,  but  personally  cor- 
rupt and  damned.  But,  once  the  Catholic  Church  had  been 
established,  orthodoxy  became  at  least  a  practical  reality.  It 
was  the  teaching  of  the  Church;   and  what  the  Church  did 


Orthodoxy:    What  is  it?  8 1 

not  teach  nor  sanction,  that  was  heresy.  And  by  this  rule 
there  are  no  orthodox  protestants ;  but  those  who  are  not  in 
the  one  Church  are  all  heretics  together.  And  if  Leo  XIII. 
should  be  converted  to-morrow  to  the  opinions  of  Colonel 
Ingersoll,  and  should  publish  them  ex  cathedra,  they  would  be 
orthodox  doctrine,  and  Colonel  Ingersoll  would  be,  willy 
nilly,  a  member  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church;  and,  if  the 
pope  were  not  ungrateful,  he  would  be  made  a  cardinal  at 
once. 

And,  if  logical  necessity  determines  the  validity  of  any 
positive  institution,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can  get  away  from 
the  conclusion  that  orthodoxy  is  that  which  the  one  Infallible 
Church  decrees.  That  is  to  say,  without  denying  the  truth  of 
the  major  premise  of  the  argument,  which  is :  There  must 
be  somewhere  upon  earth  an  organ  of  infallible  truth.  The 
Protestant  attempt  to  find  such  an  organ  in  the  Bible  has 
been  a  melancholy  failure.  It  had  failed  before  it  had 
begun.  Out  of  the  ashes  of  its  failure  came  the  Infallible 
Church.  If  the  Bible  had  had  any  power  to  make  dogma  defi- 
nite, the  Infallible  Church  would  never  have  been  born.  The 
sects  by  scores  and  hundreds  of  the  Protestant  world  do  but 
repeat  the  chaos  of  the  early  centuries,  from  the  despair  of 
which  the  Infallible  Church  emerged.  If  there  must  be  an 
infallible  church,  it  must  be  one ;  and  that  one  must  be  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  measured  by  all  the  glories  of  its 
history  and  the  magnificence  of  its  imperial  sway. 

But  can  we  accept  as  valid  the  major  premise  of  the  argu- 
ment?—  There  must  be  an  earthly  organ  of  infallible  truth. 
That  is  a  pure  assumption ;  and  the  best  way  of  finding  out 
whether  or  not  it  has  any  validity  whatever  is  to  take  in  hand 
the  Church  claiming  to  be  such  an  organ,  and  examine  its 
claim  and  see  if  it  amounts  to  anything.  The  phrase  in 
which  the  Church  has  generally  been  content  to  sum  up  the 
strength  of  her  position  is,  "  Quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod 
ab  omnibus," — "  That  which  has  been  believed  and  prac- 
tised always,  everywhere,  and  by  all."  Now,  something 
more  than  this  might  be  demanded  of  an  infallible  church ; 


82  OrtJiodoxy :    What  is  it? 

but  it  must  be  confessed  that  a  church  filling  this  bill  would 
practically  make  good  her  claim.  But  does  she  fill  the  bill  ? 
Is  hers  the  doctrine  that  is  believed  everywhere  ?  Blacken 
a  map  of  the  two  hemispheres  with  the  area  of  her  unqual- 
ified sway,  and  how  much  of  it  would  be  without  the  ebon 
hue  !  Is  hers  the  doctrine  that  has  been  believed  always  ? 
We  have  seen  how  many  centuries  it  took  to  define  and  crys- 
tallize the  doctrines  generally  known  as  orthodox.  We  have 
seen  that  the  doctrine  of  her  own  unity  was  a  thing  of  slow- 
est growth ;  while  the  doctrine  of  her  infallibility  was  con- 
summated only  yesterday  in  the  decree  of  papal  infallibility 
at  the  demand  of  a  party  called  "  an  insolent  faction "  by 
John  Henry  Newman,  who  was  afterward  a  cardinal  of  the 
Church.  The  same  great  writer  wrote  a  book,  "  The  Devel- 
opment of  Doctrine,"  which  was  an  out-and-out  confession 
of  the  absurdity  of  the  quod  semper  claim.  He  allowed  that 
there  had  been  development,  but  only  he  insisted  on  the 
lines  of  the  original  beliefs,  which  he  ingeniously  indicated 
so  as  to  make  good  his  theory.  There  was  great  need  of 
such  a  theory;  for  transubstantiation  was  not  established  till 
the  eighth  century,  nor  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  till  the 
eleventh,  nor  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  till  the  same, 
nor  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Virgin,  which  means 
that  Mary  was  born  of  Anne  without  original  sin,  till  the 
nineteenth,  Dec.  8,  1854.  The  note  of  apostolicity  goes 
with  the  "everywhere  and  always,"  to  which  the  "by  all'' 
is  only  a  rhetorical  addition.  That  the  Apostolic  Church 
was  any  such  church  as  the  Roman  Catholic  is  as  prepos- 
terous as  that  the  first  outward  church  of  the  apostles 
was  built  by  the  same  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome,  and 
was  the  exact  prototype  of  the  world's  great  basilica.  The 
note  of  sanctity,  that  which  makes  the  Roman  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church,  is  perhaps  not  worth  considering  after 
the  others  have  so  absurdly  failed.  But  it  is  the  note  that 
can  least  of  all  be  justified  by  the  history  of  the  Church. 
We  have  instead,  as  Martineau  has  written,  "  the  orgies  of 
the   palace,  the   assassinations   in   the   street,  the   swarm  of 


Orthodoxy:    What  is  it?  83 

flourishing  informers,  the  sale  of  justice,  of  divorce,  of  spirit- 
ual offices  and  honors,  turning  the  holy  seat  into  an  asylum 
of  concupiscence  and  passion,  and  startling  men  into  the 
belief  that  Antichrist  had  come." 

And  what  do  these  things  mean,  if  not  that,  even  if  the 
assumption  that  there  must  be  an  infallible  church  were  per- 
fectly valid,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  would  shout  to 
us  in  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand  voices,  "  It  is  not  in 
me  "  ?  If  there  must  be  an  infallible  church,  it  would  be  more 
reasonable  to  look  for  it  where  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together  —  men  and  women  of  probity  and  sincerity  and 
loving  kindness  —  than  in  the  vast  and  splendid  organization 
of  a  church  that  has  so  many  stains  upon  her  garments  and 
has  done  such  fearful  violence  to  the  human  conscience, 
mind,  and  heart. 

But  the  assumption  that  there  must  be  an  infallible  church 
has  no  more  validity  than  the  claim  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
to  be  that  church.  In  the  broad  make  of  things,  the  things 
that  must  be  are ;  and  that  there  is  no  infallible  church  is 
proof  positive  that  there  need  not  be  any,  the  Eternal  being 
judge.  And,  if  no  infallible  church,  then  no  orthodoxy,  no 
straight  belief,  any  deflection  from  which  is  heresy.  We  are 
all  heretics,  for  heresy  in  the  root-signification  of  the  w^ord 
is  only  choice  ;  and  in  the  last  analysis  the  dogmas  of  the 
Roman  Church  are  as  much  the  result  of  choice  as  those  of 
Calvin  or  Wesley  or  Channing.  The  trouble  with  them  is 
that  they  represent  the  choices  of  arrogant  and  overbearing 
majorities  voting  down  minorities  generally  more  intelligent 
and  moral  than  themselves. 

No  orthodoxy  !  The  Early  Church,  torn  for  five  centuries 
with  the  conflict  of  opinion  in  every  article  of  its  belief,  says, 
"  It  is  not  in  me."  The  Protestant  world,  from  one  and 
the  same  Bible  deducing  creeds  by  dozens  and  by  scores, 
says,  "  It  is  not  in  me."  The  Roman  Church,  so  late  in 
coming  to  self-consciousness,  with  her  history  so  at  variance 
with  her  pretensions,  with  her  "  development  of  doctrine  " 
influenced  more  by  superstition  than  by  the  reasonable  mind, 


84  Orthodoxy:    What  is  it? 

may  say,  "  It  is  in  me  "  ;  but  her  utter  failure  to  make  good 
those  notes  of  unity,  catholicity,  universality,  and  sanctity, 
which,  she  declares,  must  mark  the  One  Infallible  Church, 
wrings  from  each  saner  mind  the  stout  rejoinder,  "  No :  it  is 
not  in  thee." 

No  orthodoxy !  And  what  then  ?  Then  the  free  intellect 
ever  more  responsive  to  the  solemn  march  and  tender  mystery 
of  the  world.  Then  not  toleration,  for  toleration  means  that 
some  are  privileged  to  tolerate  and  some  are  not ;  or,  if  toler- 
ation, toleration  all  around,  universal  liberty  for  each  to  shape 
his  own  thought  to  the  demands  of  his  own  mind.  Then,  bet- 
ter than  infallibility,  the  unending  search  for  truth,  the  joy  of 
its  discovery,  the  strenuous  endeavor  to  embody  it  in  forms  of 
social  help  and  personal  good.  It  will  be  long  before  these 
things  are  seen  as  best  by  those  who  fill  the  ranks  of  the 
established  churches  of  the  world.  It  is  pitiful  to  see  the 
"  progressive  orthodox,"  so  called,  assuming  those  superior 
airs  which  conscious  orthodoxy  always  has  put  on  towards 
those  of  the  advance,  aping  the  manners  of  the  men  who  are 
for  driving  them  into  the  wilderness.  But  those  that  are 
able  to  receive  the  new  gospel  of  liberty,  let  them  receive  it ; 
and  for  them  the  heavens  of  truth  and  beauty  and  all  spirit- 
ual good  shall  be  opened,  and  in  their  breadth  and  height  they 
shall  be  gathered  to  the  innumerable  company  of  those  who 
in  all  ages  have  loved  the  truth  for  its  own  sake  and  walked 
in  its  increasing  light  with  a  courageous  heart. 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION. 


At  the  last  meeting  of  our  Unitarian  Club  we  had  a  trinity 
of  speeches  which  some  of  you  heard  with  various  degrees 
of  admiration  or  dissent.  But  only  a  few  of  you  were  there, 
and  therefore,  if  I  take  up  again  this  morning  the  subject  of 
that  discussion,  "Morality:  Is  there  Anything  Better?"  I  shall 
not  feel  that  I  am  warming  over  for  the  majority  a  feast  that 
they  have  had  already  and  sufficiently  enjoyed ;  and,  as  for 
the  others,  why  may  I  jiot  presume  that  the  discussion  at  the 
Club  had  the  same  effect  on  them  that  it  had  on  me,  that  it 
revived  their  interest  in  a  problem  which  has  been  greatly 
agitated  in  our  time,  but  did  not  satisfy  it  wholly, —  left  them 
pondering  some  things  and  willing  to  hear  more  about  them 
on  some  fresh  occasion  ?     And  why  not  to-day  ? 

We  had  three  speakers  at  the  Club,  and  they  were  all  of 
one  opinion, —  namely,  that  there  is  something  better  than 
morality ;  but  they  wore  this  opinion  with  so  much  differ- 
ence of  emphasis  and  illustration  that  it  did  not  seem  to  be 
the  same,  and  Miss  Hultin's  opinion,  with  which  I  found  my- 
self entirely  sympathetic,  seemed  extremely  different  from 
that  of  Dr.  Bradford  and  Dr.  Gottheil.  It  is  no  part  of  my 
scheme  this  morning  to  pass  their  different  speeches  in 
review,  but  I  shall  avail  myself  of  them  freely  to  bring  out 
one  point  after  another  that  I  wish  to  illustrate  and  enforce. 
The  real  value  of  Dr.  Gottheil's  speech  was  that  it  was  a 
capital  illustration  of  a  method  which  is  very  common  in  dis- 
cussions of  the  relative  merits  of  morality  and  religion,  the 
method  of  inferior  definition.  It  can  be  worked  both  ways. 
Colonel  Ingersoll,  for  example,  works  it  just  the  other  way 


S6  Morality  and  Religion. 

from  Dr.  Gottheil.  He  defines  religion  by  its  inferior  limit, 
and  Dr.  Gottheil  so  defines  morality.  This  is  an  easy  way 
of  getting  your  own  case.  But  it  is  like  going  to  Tupper 
instead  of  to  Shakspere  for  poetry,  to  Buchanan  instead  of 
to  Lincoln  for  statesmanship,  to  Butler  instead  of  to  Grant 
for  military  genius.  Dr.  Gottheil  defined  morality  by  its 
inferior  limit.  He  defined  it  as  mere  outward  conformity  to 
those  social  regulations  which  society  has  stamped  with  its 
approval,  as  mere  avoidance  of  the  things  which  the  State 
and  social  order  have  said  must  not  be  done,  as  where  he 
told  us  that  the  moral  people  are  in  Sing  Sing,  for  they  do 
nothing  wrong,  they  do  not  break  any  of  the  criminal  laws 
nor  any  of  the  social  regulations.  Defining  morality  in  this 
way,  it  was  no  wonder  that  he  found  something  better.  But 
that  which  he  found  better  was  itself  morality,  much  more 
deserving  of  the  name  than  that  to  which  he  gave  the  name ; 
which  some  of  us,  I  am  sure,  would  not  allow  to  be  morality 
at  all.  It  is  mere  legality,  mere  prudential  selfishness ; 
while  genuine  morality  always  carries  along  with  it  the  sense 
of  something  owed  to  others  or  to  a  common  good  or  to  an 
ideal  of  excellence.  Our  dear  rabbi  stood  before  us  as  an 
opponent  of  morality ;  but  he  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  The 
thing  he  pleaded  for,  the  spiritual  life,  inward  devotion  to 
the  just,  the  true,  the  right,  the  good,  that  was  morality ;  and, 
though  he  called  it  by  another  name,  the  rose  was  just  as 
sweet.  1  could  have  wished  that  every  person  there  had 
come  to  the  discussion  of  the  evening  fresh  from  the  reading 
of  Professor  Toy's  "Judaism  and  Christianity,"  because  that 
book  brings  out  so  clearly  the  difference  between  the  out- 
wardness of  the  Jewish  morality,  its  legality,  its  externalism, 
and  the  inwardness  of  Christianity,  of  Jesus  and  Paul.* 
You  can  easily  recall  the  things  I  have  in  mind :  that  terri- 
ble saying  of  Jesus,  "  He  that  looketh  upon  a  woman  to  lust 
after  her  hath  already  committed  adultery  in  his  heart";  that 
comparison  of  the  outside  and  the  inside  of  the  platter,  of 

*  Not  that  there  was  any  sudden  change ;  not  that  there  were  not  anticipations  of  the 
inwardness  of  Jesus  in  the  prophets  and  the  Psahns. 


Morality  and  Religion.  '^j 

the  whitened  sepulchre  and  the  dead  men's  bones,  and  all 
uncleanness.  It  was  a  very  interesting  situation, —  a  Jewish 
rabbi  standing  and  pleading  for  the  Christianity  of  the  New 
Testament  with  a  Christian  audience.  For  that  was  just 
exactly  what  it  was.  The  main  burden  of  the  rabbi's  speech 
was  the  main  burden  of  the  New  Testament.  And,  when  I 
tell  him  so,  as  I  mean  to  do,  the  next  time  we  meet  at  our 
ministers'  lunch,  in  which  he  regularly  joins,  he  will  not  be 
troubled.  He  will  say:  "That  is  all  right.  Jesus  and  Paul 
were  simply  Jewish  reformers  "  ;  and  I  shall  remember  what 
I  had  heard  him  say  before,  that  he  read  a  part  of  Paul's 
Epistles  every  day,  and  considered  the  thirteenth  chapter  of 
his  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  the  most  perfect  utterance 
of  the  religious  mind,  and  I  shall  ask  him  if,  where  that  says, 
"  Faith,  hope,  and  love,  but  the  greatest  of  these  is  love,"  the 
moral  thing,  the  love,  is  not  made  "  chief  of  all  the  blessed 
three  "  ? 

But  not  only  did  the  good  rabbi's  speech  illustrate  the 
habit  of  a  great  many  people  who  first  define  morality  by  its 
inferior  limit  and  then  disparage  it  as  compared  with  spiritu- 
ality and  religion,  and  not  only  did  it  plead  for  the  New 
Testament  Christianity  against  the  externalism  of  the  Jewish 
Law,  but  it  illustrated  one  of  the  most  dangerous  tendencies 
of  Christian  theology  ;  and  it  pleaded  for  a  morality  so  sub- 
jective in  its  character  that  the  outward  act  was  made  of  no 
account  whatever.  This  was  the  antinomian  pit  into  which 
Luther  fell,  and  many  after  him,  when  he  said,  Feccafoi'titer^ 
"Sin  and  sin  boldly,  but  yet  more  boldly  have  faith  and  be- 
lieve in  Christ,"  and  when  he  said  that  the  worst  imaginable 
sin  committed  in  faith  was  better  than  any  morality  without 
it.  Dr.  Gottheil,  in  his  passionate  pleading  for  the  sanctities 
of  the  inner  life,  said,  "What  a  man  does, —  i.e.,  his  morality, 
—  is  nothing :  it  is  what  he  is  that  tells,  that  decides."  To 
which  I  said,  and  I  repeat,  that  such  a  scheme  of  personal 
salvation  seems  to  me  hardly  less  selfish  than  the  scheme  of 
orthodox  theology.  It  makes  the  salvation  of  one's  own 
soul   the    paramount   thing ;  and,  whether    the    salvation   is 


88  Morality  and  Religion. 

from  the  pangs  of  hell  or  from  the  pangs  of  conscience  and 
unsatisfied  ideals,  it  is  a  selfish  business.  Wilberforce,  al- 
ways evangelical,  asked  Clarkson  if,  in  his  engrossment  in 
the  anti-slavery  conflict,  he  had  time  to  think  about  his  soul. 
Clarkson  said  he  had  forgotten  that  he  had  any.  And, 
saying  that,  he  planted  himself,  I  am  bound  to  think,  on  the 
right  ground, —  the  ground  that  Jesus  stood  on  when  he  said, 
"  He  that  saveth  his  soul  shall  lose  it,  but  he  that  loseth  it 
in  the  good  cause  shall  find  it  gloriously  saved."  "  Look  out, 
and  not  in."  Time  spent  in  analyzing  motives  is  time  that 
might  be  spent  in  doing  something  for  a  fellow-creature  in 
distress.  And,  if  there  is  one  thing  that  I  value  George 
Eliot  for  more  than  for  another,  it  is  for  her  steady  insistence 
that  it  is  the  effect  of  our  actions  upon  others  that  we  must 
always  have  in  mind  ;  that  Arthur  Donnithorne's  repentance 
doesn't  save  poor  Hetty  Sorrel's  life  from  ruinous  mishap ; 
that  is  all  very  well  to  rise  by  stepping-stones  of  our  dead 
selves  to  higher  things,  but  how  about  the  dead  selves  of 
other  men  and  women?  Rather  expensive  stepping-stones 
for  which  they  have  to  pay  that  we  may  rise ! 

Is  there  anything  better  than  morality?  Yes,  indeed,  if 
morality  is  mere  selfish  and  prudential  obedience  to  the  so- 
cial and  the  criminal  law.  But  such  morality  is  not  worthy  of 
the  name.  Devotion  to  spiritual  ideals  is  better.  Devo- 
tion to  the  happiness  of  others,  to  their  well-being,  to  their 
highest  good, —  that  is  the  best  of  all.  Or,  if  there  is  anything 
better  than  this,  it  must  be  something  that  is  this  and  some- 
thing more, —  the  two  things  one,  and  that  one  thing  religion. 
But  this  we  shall  consider  further  on. 

Dr.  Bradford,  the  second  speaker  at  the  Club,  not  in  the 
chronological,  but  in  the  logical  order,  gave  no  such  depre- 
ciatory account  of  morality  as  Dr.  Gotthei].  What  Dr.  Gott- 
heil  called  morality,  conformity  to  what  is  legally  and  con- 
ventionally prescribed,  he  would  not  call  morality,  I  fancy. 
His  morality  was  the  very  thing  that  Dr.  Gottheil  praised  as 
something  better  than  morality  ;  namely,  inward  spiritual  de- 
votion to  the  ideals  of  holiness  and  truth  and  love.     And, 


Morality  mid  Religion.  89 

again,  he  differed  from  the  rabbi  in  his  insistence  that  there 
is  something  better  than  this  ;  and  that  it  is  religion, —  the  re- 
ligion of  belief  and  faith  in  God  and  the  immortal  life.  This 
is  better  than  morality,  he  contended, —  though  he  used  no 
such  humble  illustration, —  even  as  a  locomotive  with  steam 
in  the  boiler  is  better  than  a  locomotive  without  steam,  or  as 
a  ship  with  sails  or  steam  is  better  than  a  ship  without  sails 
or  steam.  The  locomotive  without  steam  and  the  ship  with- 
out sails  or  steam  is  something  very  handsome,  very  line, 
very  symmetrical,  and  all  that,  only  it  will  not  go.  It  lacks 
motive  power.  That  is  what  morality  lacks  without  religion. 
That  is  what  religion  furnishes.  And  how  does  it  furnish 
this?  By  making  us  worth  saving.  If  men  are  children  of 
God  and  heirs  of  immortality,  then  we  can  go  through  fire 
and  water  for  them,  as  we  would,  if  we  had  artist-souls,  for 
the  "Venus  of  Milo  "  or  the  "  Sistine  Madonna,"  as  a  man 
with  music  in  his  soul  would  for  the  fifth  or  any  other  sym- 
phony of  Beethoven,  if  there  were  but  one  score  of  it,  and 
that  were  in  imminent  danger  of  destruction,  only  in  a  spirit 
as  much  more  energetic  and  devoted  as  an  immortal  child  of 
God  is  more  than  any  possible  creation  of  the  artist's  hand. 
Now,  you  will  certainly  acquit  me  of  the  least  desire  to 
single  out  the  opinions  of  a  particular  gentleman  and  scholar 
for  your  reprobation.  If  these  opinions  were  peculiar  to 
him  or  any  individual,  I  should  not  waste  a  moment  of  your 
time  upon  them.  But  they  are  representative  opinions, — 
representative  of  a  wide  range  of  thought,  in  which  Dr. 
Bradford  has  some  splendid  company,  that  of  Tennyson,  for 
example,  where  he  sings, — 

"The  wages  of  sin  is  death.     If  the  wages  of  Virtue  be  dust, 
^Yould  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  Hfe  of  the  worm  and  the  fly .'"' 

No  period  of  Christian  history  has  been  entirely  without 
men  to  whom  the  moral  law  has  seemed  to  rest  upon  the 
assurance  of  another  life.  Indeed,  the  average  Christian  sen- 
timent has  been  that,  without  such  assurance,  "  the  life  which 


90  Morality  and  Religion. 

now  is  "  would  have  no  moral  character, —  virtue  and  vice 
would  be  indifferent  qualities.  "  If,  after  the  manner  of 
men,"  said  Paul,  "  I  have  fought  with  beasts  at  Ephesus, 
what  doth  it  advantage  me  if  the  dead  rise  not?  Let  us 
eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die  "  ;  and  again,  "  If  in  this 
life  only  we  have  hope  of  Christ,  we  are  of  all  men  the  most 
miserable."  Christianity  has  not  monopolized  this  way  of 
thinking  and  talking.  "  No  one,"  said  Cicero,  "  without  the 
great  hope  of  immortality,  ever  offered  to  die  for  his  country," 
though  here  it  is  quite  possible  and  even  probable  that  the 
immortality  of  fame  is  meant.  But  Christianity  affords  the 
most  numerous  and  the  most  striking  illustrations.  Listen 
to  a  few  out  of  the  many  taken  at  random  and  without  chron- 
ological order.  "  There  can  be  no  morality,"  said  Chateau- 
briand, "  if  there  is  no  future  state."  "  If  you  believe  in  no 
future  life,"  said  Luther,  "  I  would  not  give  a  mushroom 
for  your  God.  Then  do  as  you  like.  For,  if  no  God,  so 
no  devil  and  no  hell.  As  with  a  fallen  tree,  it  is  all  over 
when  you  die.  Then  plunge  into  lechery,  rascality,  robbery, 
and  murder."  "To  deny  immortality,"  said  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby  "taketh  away  all  morality,  and  changeth  men  into 
beasts  by  removing  the  ground  of  all  difference  in  those 
things  which  are  to  govern  our  actions."  And  the  great 
preacher  Massillon  said,  "  If  we  wholly  perish  with  the  body, 
the  maxims  of  charity,  patience,  justice,  honor,  gratitude, 
and  friendship,  are  empty  words.  Our  own  passions  shall 
decide  our  duty."  "  If  there  be  no  future  life,"  said  Chal- 
mers, "  the  moral  constitution  of  man  is  stripped  of  its  sig- 
nificancy,  and  the  Author  of  that  constitution  is  stripped  of 
his  wisdom,  authority,  and  honor."  "Virtue,"  said  Paley, 
"is  the  doing  good  to  mankind  in  obedience  to  the  will  of 
God,  and  for  the  sake  of  everlasting  happiness."  And  again, 
"The  difference,  and  the  only  difference,  between  prudence 
and  virtue  is  that  in  the  one  case  we  consider  what  we  shall 
gain  or  lose  in  the  present  world  ;  in  the  other  case,  what  we 
shall  gain  or  lose  in  the  other." 

But,  surely,  you  will  say,  This  way  of  thinking  has  not  in- 


Morality  and  Religion.  91 

vaded  any  of  the  more  liberal  minds  of  modern  Christendom  ! 
Surely,  it  has  invaded  some  of  the  most  liberal.  Frederick 
Robertson  was  one  of  these ;  and  he  said,  "  If  the  soul  be 
not  immortal,  I  am  not  certain  that  we  can  show  cause  why 
Saint  Paul's  life  of  sublime  devotion  was  not  a  noble  exist- 
ence wasted.  If  the  soul  be  not  immortal,  Christian  life  — 
not  merely  apostolical  devotedness  —  is  a  grand  imperti- 
nence. With  our  immortality  gone  [this  was  precisely  Dr. 
Bradford's  view],  the  value  of  humanity  ceases,  and  people 
become  not  worth  living  for.  Why  should  I  live  like  an 
angel  if  I  must  die  like  a  dog  ? "  "  If  to-morrow  I  perish 
utterly,"  said  Theodore  Parker, —  the  last  man  from  whom 
we  should  have  expected  any  such  sentiment, — "  if  to-mor- 
row I  perish  utterly,  I  shall  care  nothing  for  the  generations 
of  mankind.  I  shall  know  no  higher  law  than  passion. 
Morality  will  vanish."  Said  I  not  rightly  that,  if  Dr.  Brad- 
ford erred,  he  erred  in  splendid  company !  To  differ  from 
such  company  may  be  a  daring  thing;  and  yet,  if  I  had  to 
choose  between  this  order  of  opinion  and  that  of  those  who 
maintain  that  the  belief  in  immortality  is  essentially  immoral, 
I  should  choose  the  latter  without  a  moment's  hesitation. 
But  we  cannot  choose  between  opposing  doctrines.  Belief 
is  not  a  matter  of  choice  :  it  is  a  matter  of  evidence  and  con- 
viction. There  is  no  evidence  for  the  immorality  of  the  doc- 
trine of  immortality  that  is  sufficient  for  conviction  to  any 
unprejudiced  person.  But  I  do  not  wonder  that  such  a  dam- 
aging opinion  has  found  acceptance  with  many  earnest  souls. 
The  doctrine  of  immortality  is  an  immoral  doctrine  when- 
ever it  is  made  indispensable  to  the  moral  life  of  man  here 
in  this  world.  It  was  an  immoral  doctrine,  a  doctrine  pre- 
judicial to  morality,  in  every  personal  instance  I  have  named. 
The  doctrine  was  immoral,  not  the  men.  There  was  more 
goodness  in  them  than  they  gave  themselves  credit  for.  If 
Paul  had  been  obliged  to  give  up  his  faith  in  a  future  life,  he 
would  not  have  said,  "  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow 
we  die,"  but  "  Let  us  work  while  the  day  lasts."  If  not,  so 
much  the  worse  for  Paul.     And  Robertson  would  still  have 


92  Morality  and  Religion. 

lived  like  an  angel  if  he  had  known  that  he  must  die  like  a 
dog,  though  how  a  man  who  lives  like  an  angel  can  die  like  a 
dog  is  to  me  inconceivable.  But,  then,  too,  I  have  known 
dogs  to  die  embosomed  in  a  wonder  of  affection  of  which 
an  angel  might  be  glad. 

There  are  various  renderings  of  the  motive  power  of  im- 
mortality. The  grossest  is  that  virtue  cannot  be  enforced 
without  the  sanctions  of  another  life,  without  its  penalties  to 
warn,  its  promises  to  lure,  the  soul  immersed  in  manifold, 
temptation.  But  one  thing  is  certain.  Never  has  civilized 
society  attained  to  lower  depths  of  degradation  than  in  those 
Christian  centuries  when  the  felicities  of  heaven  and  the 
agonies  of  hell  were  no  mere  rhetoric,  but  just  as  real  as 
monkish  gingerbread  and  beer  or  as  the  tortures  of  the  In- 
quisition. As  a  police  agent,  the  belief  in  other-world  re- 
wards and  penalties,  conceived  with  an  appalling  realism, 
did  not  avail  to  stay  men's  hands  from  violence,  to  bridle 
their  fierce  lusts,  to  check  their  meanness  and  rapacity,  to 
soften  their  revenge  and  haie.  And,  however  it  has  been  in 
the  past,  Macbeih  is  but  the  mouthpiece  of  all  modern 
thought  and    feeling  when   he  says,  thumbing  his  dagger's 

edge,— 

"  If  the  assassination 
Could  trammel  up  the  consequence,  and  catch 
With  his  surcease,  success  ;  that  but  this  blow 
Might  be  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  here, 
But  here,  upon  this  bank  and  shoal  of  time, — 
We'd  jump  the  life  to  come." 

But,  surely,  the  more  liberal  thinkers  I  have  named  did  not 
find  the  moral  value  of  immortality  in  its  ability  to  entice  the 
selfish  and  to  scare  the  wicked  from  their  sin.  Surely,  Theo- 
dore Parker  saw  as  plainly  as  any  man  has  ever  seen  that 
such  a  view  demoralizes  morality,  contaminates  virtue  with 
selfishness.  What  he  felt  —  and  many  with  him  and  before 
and  after  him  —  was  that,  in  losing  immortality,  human 
nature  would  lose  its  greatness,  that  a  perishable  being  would 
not   be  worth  working   for  with  patience    and  self-sacrifice, 


Morality  and  Religion.  93 

whether  that  being  was  one's  self  or  another.  But  the  evi- 
dence is  overwhelming  that  the  moral  life  has  been  lived  by 
many  who  have  not  aspired  to  immortality  and  who  have  had 
no  theistic  faith.  Thousands  of  millions  of  the  Buddhist 
faith  have  given  this  evidence, —  without  belief  in  God  or  im- 
mortality, exhibiting  a  moral  life  vastly  superior  to  the  Brah- 
mins, with  their  double  confidence  in  God  and  immortality. 
Moreover,  there  are  thousands  in  the  modern  world  without 
this  double  confidence,  or  either  part  of  it,  whose  moral  life 
shames  that  of  those  who  talk  of  God  as  literally  as  of  a  man 
on  the  next  street,  and  of  heaven  as  if  they  had  been  there 
and  explored  with  vulgar  curiosity  its  every  mystery.  For 
there  remains  for  such 

"the  fidelity 
Of  fellow-wanderers  in  a  barren  place, 
Who  share  the  same  dire  thirst,  and  therefore  share 
The  scanty  water  ;  the  fidelity 
Of  fellow-heirs  of  this  small  island,  Life, 
Where  we  must  dig  and  sow  and  reap  like  brothers." 

No  theories  about  another  world  or  about  God  or  the  consti- 
tution of  our  human  life  can  alter  the  inexpugnable  fact  that 
we  are  here,  with  bodies  sensitive  to  a  thousand  and  ten 
thousand  varying  influences  for  good  or  ill,  with  minds  thirst- 
ing for  knowledge,  hearts  longing  for  affection,  imaginations 
hungering  for  the  beautiful.  To  make  the  most  and  best  of 
all  these  is  certainly  worth  while,  whatever  fate  impends. 
And  I  must  confess  that  it  is  to  me  a  terrible  thought  that  it 
is  only  the  fulness  and  richness  and  splendor  of  life  that  at- 
tract our  sympathies,  or  that  the  miseries  of  life  must  have 
this  golden  background  before  they  can  appeal  to  us  for  help 
and  cheer.  The  man  to  whom  misery  does  not  appeal  as 
misery,  who  would  not  alleviate  a  suffering  or  save  a  threat- 
ened life  simply  because  it  was  suffering  or  threatened,  would 
prove  himself  not  only  unworthy  of  the  immortality  that  he 
demands  to  sanction  his  morality,  but  unworthy  of  the  privi- 
leges and  blessing  of  this  present  life.     Shame  on  the  man 


94  Morality  and  Religion. 

whose  heart  does  not  go  out  as  quickly  to  a  beggar's  as  to  a 
prince's  child  !  The  motive  power  got  for  the  moral  train  by 
such  considerations  may  be  enormous.  The  trouble  is  it  is 
a  motive  power  that  wrecks  the  train,  that  brings  morality  to 
naught,  that  multiplies  its  amount  at  the  expense  of  its 
quality. 

Never  was  lesson  read  more  backwardly  than  is  this  of  the 
relation  of  the  human  soul  to  the  immortal  life.  We  need 
the  greatness  of  the  soul  to  prove  its  immortality,  and  we 
cannot  draw  upon  its  immortality  to  prove  its  greatness  in 
advance.  The  advocate  of  immortality  as  the  sanction  and 
the  inspiration  of  morality  sets  out  by  denuding  human  life 
of  all  its  characteristic  strength  and  discharging  it  of  all  its 
characteristic  virtue.  Thus  Dr.  Bradford,  spurning  with  a 
contemptuous  heel  the  platform  upon  which  he  stood,  said, 
"If  the  soul  is  no  more  than  this  platform,  I  will  care  for 
it  no  more  than  for  this."  That  is  plain  enough.  Why 
should  he  .-^  But  he  might  as  well  have  said,  "If  the  sun 
is  a  leather  button,  its  radiance  shall  get  no  praise  from 
me,"  or  "If  the  '  Sistine  Madonna'  is  a  tyro's  daub,  it 
shall  not  have  my  admiration,"  or  "  If  Shakspere  is  a  worse 
poet  than  Tupper,  why  should  we  read  his  plays  ? "  But 
Shakspere  is  not  a  worse  poet  than  Tupper,  and  the  "  Sis- 
tine  Madonna  "  is  not  a  tyro's  daub,  and  the  sun  is  not  a 
leather  button,  and  the  soul  of  man  is  not  a  wooden  platform, 
or  no  more  than  that,  but  noble  in  reason,  infinite  in  faculties, 
with  thoughts  that  wander  through  eternity,  with  quite  im- 
measurable capacities  for  knowledge,  action,  love.  In  Ten- 
nyson we  have  the  same  depreciation, — 

"  If  the  wages  of  Virtue  be  dust, 
Would  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  life  of  the  worm  and  the  fly  ?" 

Perhaps  not ;  but  the  question  is  not  worth  considering,  see- 
ing that  the  wages  of  virtue  are  not  dust.  They  are  the 
things  done,  the  accomplished  facts,  the  suffering  alleviated, 
the  pain  assuaged,  the  broken  heart  bound  up,  the  wrong 
thing  stricken  down,  the  right  thing   set  on  high,  and  the 


Morality  and  Religion.  95 

proud  consciousness  of  having  been  a  help,  and  not  a  hin- 
drance, to  these  lofty  ends.  "  Would  she  have  heart  to  en- 
dure for  the  life  of  the  worm  and  the  fly  ? "  She  has  no  such 
life.  Human  life  has  none  such.  The  life  of  the  worm  and 
the  fly  is  for  a  day  or  a  few  days  or  weeks.  The  life  of 
man  is  three  and  fourscore  years,  lengthened  out  sometimes 
well-nigh  another  score.  And,  while  it  lasts,  it  is  not  the  life 
of  the  worm  and  the  fly, —  a  little  throb  of  tremulous  sensa- 
tion,—  but  in  form  and  moving  how  express  and  admirable, 
in  apprehension  how  like  an  angel,  in  action  how  like  a  god ! 
And  it  is  because  man  is  what  he  is  that  we  have  for  him  a 
hope  full  of  immortality,  and  a  sense  of  his  eternal  sonship 
with  the  Father  of  all  souls.  No  ultimate  catastrophe  can 
impeach  the  greatness  of  humanity.  Whatever  is,  is  so. 
Yonder  great  bridge  or  yonder  lovely  tower  may,  by  some 
throe  of  nature,  be  a  ruinous  heap  before  to-morrow  dawns. 
But,  while  the  one  aspires  to  heaven  and  the  other  swings  in 
air,  how  beautiful  they  are!  Stability  does  not  prove  per- 
fection ;  else  were  the  Pyramids  more  beautiful  than  the  Par- 
thenon or  the  mosaics  of  Santa  Maria  Maggiore  more  per- 
fect than  the  splendid  forms  which  Michel  Angelo  painted 
for  a  warrior  pope. 

"  If  you  can't  go  to  'eaven,"  said  a  blundering  consoler  to 
a  sick  man  in  the  hospital,  "  you  ought  to  be  glad  that  there 
is  such  a  place  as  'ell  for  you  to  go  to."  But  we  have  no  such 
miserable  dilemma  in  the  world  of  human  struggle,  aspira- 
tion, hope,  and  fear.  If  we  can't  go  to  heaven,  we  ought  to 
be  glad  that  there  is  such  a  place  as  earth  to  live  in  for  our 
mortal  span.  It  is,  I  know,  the  scene  of  awful  miseries 
and  crushing  disappointments  and  intolerable  crimes.  But 
it  is  marvellously  beautiful,  with  its  brave,  overhanging  firma- 
ment, its  grass  with  daisies  pied,  its  forests  stretching  up  the 
mountains'  sides,  its  vastness  of  old  ocean's  sway  and  moan. 
But  there  is  nothing  in  this  house  "  called  Beautiful "  so 
beautiful  as  the  men  and  women  who  go  in  and  out  of  all  its 
spacious  rooms,  sit  at  its  tables  and  enjoy  the  feast,  in  its 
sequestered  corners  have  their  tender  passages  of  love,  and 


96  Morality  and  Religion. 

in  its  silent  chambers  their  communion  cup  of  sorrow  salt 
with  tears.  In  such  a  house,  with  such  inhabitants,  having 
such  bodies  and  such  souls,  life  is  worth  living,  even  if  we 
have  our  be-all  and  our  end-all  here,  if  creatures  who  can 
hope  so  much  and  love  so  much  are  shut  in  by  a  wall  of 
darkness  which  cannot  be  broken  down  or  broken  through. 
"  For,"  as  John  Morley  writes,  "  a  man  will  already  be  in  no 
mean  paradise  if  at  the  hour  of  sunset  a  good  hope  can  fall 
on  him,  like  harmonies  of  music,  that  the  earth  shall  still  be 
fair,  and  the  happiness  of  every  feeling  creature  still  receive 
a  constant  augmentation,  and  each  good  cause  yet  find 
worthy  defenders,  when  the  memory  of  his  own  poor  name 
and  personality  has  long  been  blotted  out  of  the  brief  recol- 
lection of  men  forever." 

Do  these  things  mean  that  the  religious  rendering  of  the 
world  is  without  moral  inspiration  ?  I  doubt  it  very  much.  I 
doubt  it  none  the  less  because  I  am  persuaded  that,  if  I  could 
ever  doubt  the  immortality  of  man,  his  mortal  life  would  still 
have  for  me  a  tremendous  ethical  significance,  morality  and 
virtue  would  still  be  glorious  homes  for  glorious  realities,  a 
life  of  purity  and  honor  would  still  be  infinitely  preferable  to 
a  life  stained  with  dishonor  and  impurity,  and  would  still 
have  incalculable  influence  on  the  fortunes  of  mankind.  I 
doubt  it  none  the  less  because  I  see  that  there  is  moral  in- 
spiration in  the  conviction  of  life's  awful  brevity.  What 
spur  and  excitation  here 

"  To  crowd  the  narrow  span  of  life 
With  wise  designs  and  virtuous  deeds  " ! 

All  this  may  be,  and  still  the  hope  of  other  life  beyond  the 
present's  bound  may  have  its  own  peculiar  moral  inspiration. 
For,  while  without  this  hope  every  moral  obligation  would 
still  remain  in  full  force,  who  shall  say  that  the  quest  for 
knowledge  is  not  prosecuted  under  more  inspiring  auspices 
the  moment  we  believe  that  all  we  have  here  in  this  primary 
school  is  but  the  first  instalment  of  a  boundless  acquisition; 


Molality  and  Religion.  97 

that  duty  does  not  step  to  a  diviner  music  the  moment  we 
beHeve  that  what  we  make  ourselves  through  patient  effort 
here  determines  into  what  spiritual  society  we  enter  when 
we  leave  all  this  behind ;  that  affection,  which  may  be  "all  the 
more  impetuous  for  being  pent  in  limits  of  mortality,  does 
not  expand  into  a  broader,  calmer  flow  when  it  has  sweet 
assurance  of  unending  years  ?  Granted  that  not  one  moral 
obligation  is  created  by  the  relation  of  this  life  to  another, 
does  not  the  whole  of  life  float  in  a  larger,  more  invigorating 
atmosphere  when  to  the  imagination  it  is  no  longer  bounded 
by  the  limits  of  this  present  life  ?  The  promise  we  lay  hold 
of  is  no  promise  of  reward  or  rest,  but  that  of  larger,  more 
engrossing  toil. 

"  Over  a  few  things  we  have  faithful  been  : 
Now  over  many  do  thou  give  us  rule, — 
For  work,  more  work ;  for  lessons  learned,  to  be 
Forever  in  thy  school." 

Is  there  anything  better  than  morality?  Yes,  the  religion 
which,  albeit  morality  is  the  larger  and  the  better  part  of  it, 
is  something  more  than  that,  which  gives  to  us  the  hope  of 
immortality,  not  as  the  necessary  motive  of  morality,  but  as 
its  opportunity  and  inspiration,  which  makes  that  hope  the 
balm  for  many  a  wound  which  draws  the  life-blood  from  our 
hearts,  which  nourishes  our  wonder  and  our  adoration  with 
the  majestic  order  of  the  world,  which  sees  in  that  as  in  a 
mirror  the  eternal  countenance,  which,  in  a  God  whose  higher 
attributes  are  all  the  conquests  of  morality  by  its  own  ideals, 
finds  a  reciprocal  action  on  morality  that  is  full  of  help  and 
cheer.  Here  is,  perhaps,  the  most  sufficient  answer  that  can 
be  given  to  the  relative  depreciation  of  morality  in  compari- 
son with  religion.  The  best  religion  has  to  give — a  right- 
eous God  —  was  given  to  it  by  morality.  God  is  the  son  of 
man.  How  a  decline  in  religion  would  affect  morality  has 
been  much  discussed.  How  a  rise  in  morality  would  affect 
religion  is  a  much  more  important  question.  How  a  rise  in 
morality  has  affected  religion  is  the  most  interesting  and  im- 


98 


Morality  and  Religion. 


portant  chapter  in  the  religious  life  of  man.  It  has  converted 
the  God  of  the  imagination  from  a  cruel  and  licentious  king 
into  the  heavenly  Father  worthy  of  men's  perfect  trust  and 
loyal  obedience.  There  are  those  to  whom  this  process  seems 
exclusively  ideal.  To  me  it  seems  a  voyage  of  discovery 
which  has  thrown  open  to  mankind  a  boundless  continent, — 
the  Infinite  Reality  of  God.  And  the  Columbus  of  this 
voyage  is  no  other  than  the  moral  purpose  of  that  infinite 
and  eternal  being  which  is  the  soul  of  man. 


1 


1  > 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENERGY. 


The  word  which  will  sum  up  the  scientific  achievement  of 
the  nineteenth  century  to  an  unparalleled  degree,  unless  the 
years  remaining  have  some  very  great  discovery  in  store,  is 
"  transmutation."  The  achievement  corresponding  to  this 
word  has  been  in  two  related  orders  of  phenomena,  the 
chemical  and  physical  ;  and  in  one  apart  from  these,  the 
biological.  In  the  former  case,  it  is  the  transmutation  of 
energy  that  has  been  discovered.  In  the  latter,  it  is  the 
transmutation  of  species.  The  two  discoveries,  taken  sepa- 
rately, are  of  great  scientific  interest  and  value.  Taken  to- 
gether, their  philosophical  and  religious  value  is  immense. 
The  books  elucidating  these  discoveries  are  the  most  valu- 
able additions  to  "  our  Unitarian  Literature  "  that  have  been 
written  for  the  last  half-century,  though  I  have  never  heard 
that  the  American  Unitarian  Association  has  any  of  them 
upon  its  list  of  publications  or  keeps  any  of  them  for  sale. 
But  how  impressively  they  teach  the  unity  of  the  Force  which 
has  so  many  manifestations  in  the  material  world, —  the 
unity  of  organization  underlying  myriads  of  animal  and  vege- 
table forms  !  "  The  Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord."  The  pebble 
and  the  star,  the  sunshine  and  the  coal,  the  moneron  and 
the  man,  all  chant  in  unison  this  Unitarian  confession. 

It  is  of  the  transmutation  or  conversion  of  energy  that  I 
wish  to  speak  with  you  to  day,  yet  not  of  any  of  those  brilliant 
illustrations  of  the  law  of  conservation  which  have  been 
developed  by  Grove  and  Mayer  and  Faraday  and  Tyndall 
and  Thomson  and  Joule  and  others, —  illustrations  by  which 
it  is   shown  that,  though   the  total    energy  of   any  body  or 


lOO  The  Conversion  of  Energy. 

system  of  bodies  cannot  be  increased  or  diminished  by  any 
mutual  action,  it  can  be  transformed  into  any  one  of  the 
forms  of  which  energy  is  susceptible, —  heat  into  motion,  mo- 
tion into  heat,  and  heat  or  motion  into  electricity  or  light  or 
magnetism  or  chemical  affinity  or  mechanical  force,  and  each 
of  these  in  turn  into  any  one  of  the  others,  or  into  all  of 
them  in  various  proportions.  The  conversion  of  energy  of 
which  I  wish  to  speak  has  little  of  scientific,  much  of  moral 
interest.  Whether  or  not  we  have  here  a  case  of  natural  law 
in  the  spiritual  world  I  shall  not  attempt  to  prove.  But,  if 
we  have  not  an  extended  law,  we  have  a  striking  correspond- 
ence. Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  natural  world  abounds  in 
wonderful  analogies  of  spiritual  things,  which  many,  like  Pro- 
fessor Drummond,  in  his  "  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual 
World,"  have  been  inclined  to  overwork. 

Some  of  you,  I  am  sure,  have  read  the  Life  of  Elizabeth 
Gilbert.  The  briefest  summary  of  what  she  was  and  did  will 
afford  a  very  striking  illustration  of  one  form  of  moral  con- 
servation,—  the  development  of  faculty  through  limitation 
and  defect.  She  was  a  bishop's  little  daughter,  whose  sight 
was  destroyed  in  her  third  year  by  an  attack  of  scarlet  fever, 
which  bequeathed  to  her  a  general  inheritance  of  ruined 
health.  Throughout  her  childhood  and  her  youth  she  was 
not  unhappy,  her  misfortune  attracting  to  her  a  great  deal 
of  sympathy  and  attention.  It  was  when  she  came  to  the 
threshold  of  womanhood  that  the  difference  between  her  life 
and  that  of  her  several  sisters  came  home  to  her  with  ago- 
nizing force.  Then  in  a  happy  hour,  after  a  period  of  in- 
tense depression,  threatening  to  shake  her  reason  from  its 
seat,  she  met  a  noble  woman  who  cherished  the  conviction 
that,  even  for  women  cut  off  from  love  and  marriage  by 
some  superiority  or  defect,  a  useful,  happy  life  was  possible, 
that  the  energy  of  their  thwarted  instincts  might  be  con- 
verted into  an  energy  of  social  good.  The  mind  of  the  poor 
sightless  girl,  impregnated  by  the  stronger  mind  of  her  com- 
panion, conceived  a  hope  that  she  might  accomplish  some- 
thing, notwithstanding  her  pathetic  limitation.     The  energy 


>      >    '     ,>     »       >  J 
,  >      >      .1     J        J 


T/ie  Conversion\of  :$.i),er^p  \  /  j.;  j^i  JIO,! 

of  her  sorrow  and  despair  was  gradually  transmuted  into  an 
energy  of  sympathy  and  helpfulness.  Advantages  are  obli- 
gations. She  was  blind,  but  she  had  every  alleviation  of  her 
calamity  that  wealth  could  buy  or  love  could  give.  There 
were  many  blind  who  had  none  of  her  alleviations.  What 
could  she  do  for  these  ?  In  a  London  cellar  she  set  up  a 
shop  for  the  sale  of  baskets  manufactured  by  the  blind. 
This  was  soon  outgrown  ;  and  shortly  an  association  was 
organized  for  carrying  on  the  work,  which  in  a  few  years 
could  show  a  balance-sheet  of  £j,ooo.  "  Don't  work  your- 
self to  death,"  a  friend  said  to  her  one  day.  "  I'm  working 
myself  to  life,"  she  answered,  with  a  laugh.  Working  her- 
self to  life  !  What  pregnant  words  !  How  many  that  now 
waste  themselves  to  death  might  work  themselves  to  life  if 
they  could  but  convert  the  energy  of  their  frivolity  or  their 
despair  into  the  energy  of  some  beneficent  activity  !  Before 
Elizabeth  Gilbert's  death,  thanks  to  her  loving  zeal,  there 
were  large  and  well-appointed  workshops  in  almost  every 
city  of  England  where  blind  men  and  women  were  em- 
ployed, where  tools  had  been  invented  or  modified  for  them, 
and  where  agencies  had  been  established  for  the  sale  of 
their  work.  But  no  one  who  understood  the  course  of  her 
experience  could  truly  say  of  her,  "  She  saves  others ;  her- 
self she  cannot  save."  She  t/td  save  herself ;  not  from  all 
pain  and  deprivation,  but  from  all  bitterness  of  spirit,  from 
all  blackness  of  despair. 

And  it  is  not  as  if  her  case  were  solitary.  It  was  very  far 
from  being  so.  The  name  is  legion  of  those  maimed  and 
suffering  people  who,  "  like  the  wounded  oyster,  mend  their 
shell  with  pearl."  It  often  seems  as  if  the  energy  needful 
for  the  supply  of  any  functional  part  of  a  man's  nature  were 
dammed  up  in  him  by  the  ruin  of  that  part,  so  that,  unless 
it  can  be  diverted  into  some  other  channel,  where  it  will 
strike  some  other  wheel  and  set  other  machinery  in  motion, 
it  must  spread  itself  abroad  with  ruinous  desolation,  either 
converting  into  vast  malarious  pools  wide  reaches  of  the  mind 
and  heart  or  hopelessly  denuding  them  of  all  fair  and  fruit- 


:_02  -The  CQHversion  of  Energy. 

ful  earth.     But  the  energy  that  is  thwarted  can  be  diverted 
and    economized  for  noble  ends.     The    thwarted  energy  of 
sight  can  be  transmuted  into  quicker  hearing  and  into  nicer 
touch.      And    the    principle    holds    good    with    every   part. 
There  are  men  who  never  know  the  strength  of  their  reserves 
of  aptitude  and  skill,  of   manual  or  intellectual  ability,  till 
they  are  pressed  back  upon  them  by  the  bayonet  points  of 
some  calamity  that  seems  about  to  overwhelm  them,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  is  the  sign  by  which  they  conquer  gloriously. 
A  lingering  convalescence  sets  a  man  to  reading  books  that 
turn  his  thoughts  to  natural  history,  and  he  becomes  one  of 
the  first  naturalists  of  Europe.     Within  ten  minutes  after  his 
eyes  had  been  put  out,  by  the  discharge  close  to  them  of  his 
father's  gun,  Henry  Fawcett  had  determined  that  the  political 
career  on  which  he  had  resolved  should  not  be  forfeited  by 
the  untoward  circumstance  ;  and  his  resolve  was  kept.     And 
it  is  difficult  to  imagine  how,  with  every  sense  complete,  his 
political  career  could  have  been  more  successful  than  it  actu- 
ally was ;  while,  in  political  economy,  without   eyesight,  he 
perceived  great   laws    and    principles   which    many  now,  as 
then,  cannot  or  will  not   see.     Who  does  not  know  that  it 
was  Francis  Ruber's  ruined  sight   that  determined  the  bee- 
li?ie  of  his  lifelong  study  and  investigation  into  the  nature  and 
the  habits  of  the  little  creatures  that  he  could  no  longer  see. 
Forced  into  a  narrower  channel,  the  struggling  river  gets  more 
deep  and  clear.     With  a  man's  life  it  is  not  otherwise  than  so. 
I  doubt  not  that  a  thousand  instances  could  be  discovered, 
which  would  be  exponental  of   ten  thousand  more,  of  lives 
shaped  by  the  blows   of    adverse  circumstance  into   instru- 
ments of  higher  good  than  they  would  otherwise  have  accom- 
plished.    Where  would  be  Milton's  "song  to  generations," 
if  his  political  ambition  had  been  realized  .''     Where  Dante's 
glorious  trilogy,  if  Florence  had  not  thrust  him  out  ?     Did  not 
the  music  of  a  deaf  Beethoven  have  to  be  of  a  more  penetrat- 
ing  sweetness,  that  his  soul  might    hear   it  ?      Jesus,   when 
asked,  "  Who  sinned,  this  man  or  his  parents,  that  he  was 
born  blind?"  answered,  "Neither  this  man  nor  his  parents, 


The  Conversion  of  Energy.  103 

but  that  the  glory  of  God  might  be  revealed  in  him."  Now, 
we  know  well  enough  that  the  physical  defect  of  children  is 
oftentimes  the  product  of  parental  sin.  But  we  also  know 
that,  be  that  as  it  may,  the  glory  of  God  is  frequently  re- 
vealed by  such  defect,  and  no  less  the  glory  of  man,  in  that 
such  defect  summons  the  unfortunate  to  completer  self-con- 
trol, self-possession,  and  self-consecration.  It  were  foolish  to 
pretend  to  any  preference  for  a  maimed  and  thwarted  to  a 
complete  and  sovereign  life.  But  we  can  be  sincerely  glad 
that  it  is  possible  for  men  to  convert  the  energy  of  their 
maimed  and  thwarted  powers  into  the  energy  of  others  that 
are  entirely  sound  ;  or,  if  this  form  of  statement  is  objection- 
able, the  energy  of  their  disappointment  and  despair  into  an 
energy  of  resolve  and  patience  and  persistency  that  shall 
accomplish  more  with  the  five  talents  left  to  them  than  they 
might  have  acomplished  with  the  ten  of  which  at  first  they 
seemed  to  be  secure. 

But  maimed  and  thwarted  powers  are  not  the  only  circum- 
stances in  man's  average  lot  that  produce  an  energy  of  con- 
scious misery  and  loss  which  is  capable  of  transmutation  into 
an  energy  of  self-development  and  social  use.  Ever  beauti- 
ful to  me  is  the  story  of  Richard  Cobden's  visit  to  John 
Bright,  when  the  latter's  wife  was  lying  dead  and  the  heart 
of  the  great  Commoner  was  shattered  by  the  dreadful  blow. 
"  There  are  thousands  of  homes  in  England,"  Cobden  said, 
"that  are  full  of  sorrow,  if  different  from  yours,  still  very 
hard  to  bear,  because  of  unjust  laws  which  protect  a  few, 
while  they  impoverish  many.  When  the  first  bitterness  of 
your  grief  is  past,  you  will  come  to  me,  and  we  will  give  our- 
selves no  rest  until  these  unjust  laws  have  been  repealed." 
And  Bright  responded  to  these  words  of  generous  invitation, 
and  the  thing  was  done.  The  wicked  Corn  Laws  were  re- 
pealed ;  and  the  industrialism  of  England  immediately  rallied 
from  the  depression  which  the  disease  of  governmental  inter- 
ference, raging  for  centuries,  had  produced.  It  is  not  as  if 
for  every  suffering  heart,  made  sorrowful  by  the  loss  of  some 
dear  relative  or  friend,  there  were  always  some  great  cause 


104  ^^^^  Conversion  of  Energy. 

at  hand,  like  that  to  which  Cobden  and  Bright  consecrated 
their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and  their  sacred  honor.  But  for 
every  suffering  heart  there  is  at  hand,  or  can  be  found,  some 
noble  task  into  the  energy  necessary  for  the  doing  of  which 
it  can  transmute  the  energy  of  its  grief  and  pain.  For  one 
it  shall  be  the  daily  honorable  strife  for  maintenance  or 
competence ;  for  another  it  shall  be  the  steady  household 
care  or  the  endeavor  to  make  good  to  those  remaining  at 
least  a  part  of  the  fidelity  and  wisdom  that  have  been  with- 
drawn ;  or  some  high  work  of  literature  or  art ;  or  some  en- 
terprise of  social  good ;  or  some  enthusiasm  of  political  re- 
form. And  let  no  one  imagine  that  by  such  conversion  of 
the  energy  of  grief  into  the  energy  of  labor  and  beneficence 
we  wrong  our  dead,  we  make  more  sure  that  swift  forgetful- 
ness  of  the  departed  which  is  more  tragical  than  death  itself. 
The  sorrow  that  can  be  cured  so  easily  must  be  a  very  super- 
ficial wound.  To  consecrate  a  sorrow  is  not  to  forget  it,  is 
not  to  lose  its  sacred  presence  with  us,  its  sublime  compan- 
ionship, the  solemn  radiance  of  its  majestic  face.  When 
Mahomet  was  questioned  by  a  follower  what  monument  he 
should  devise  for  his  departed  mother,  the  prophet  answered, 
"  Dig  her  a  well  in  the  desert."  If  the  advice  was  taken, 
the  mother  was  not  on  this  account  forgotten  sooner  than 
she  might  otherwise  have  been.  There  is  never  any  lack  of 
deserts  in  the  wide  stretch  of  human  life  between  the  moun- 
tainous boundaries  of  birth  and  death,  wherein,  if  he  will,  a 
man  of  sorrows  may  dig  a  well,  so  husbanding  the  energy  of 
his  sorrow,  to  the  end  that  weary,  faint,  and  thirsty  travellers 
may  find  a  moment  of  refreshment  there,  a  thought  of  human 
providential  care. 

"  What  shall  I  do  with  all  the  days  and  hours 
That  must  be  counted  ere  I  see  thy  face  ? 
How  shall  I  charm  the  interval  which  lowers 
Between  this  time  and  that  sweet  time  of  grace  ? 

"  I'll  tell  thee :  for  thy  sake  I  will  lay  hold 
Of  all  good  aims,  and  consecrate  to  thee, 
In  worthy  deeds,  each  moment  that  is  told 
Whilst  thou,  beloved  one,  art  far  from  me. 


The  Conversion  of  Energy.  105 

"So  may  this  darksome  time  build  up  in  me 
A  thousand  graces  which  shall  thus  be  thine, 
So  shall  my  love  and  longing  hallowed  be, 
And  thoughts  of  thee  an  influence  divine." 

This  is  the  true  economy  of  grief.  There  is  none  other  that 
is  so  high  and  good.  And,  whatever  be  the  occasion  of  our 
sorrow,  there  is  always  ready  for  our  refuge  and  defence 
this  law  of  transmutation,  this  possibility  of  converting  the 
energy  of  our  sorrow  into  an  energy  of  use  and  good.  There 
is  one  book  in  my  library  which  I  have  occasion  frequently 
to  take  in  hand.  No  duller  book  was  ever  made,  and  yet  I 
always  find  a  poem  in  it  as  I  turn  the  arid  leaves.  It  is 
Cruden's  Biblical  Concordance,  the  result  of  task-work  which 
the  man  imposed  upon  himself  when  tortured  by  "  the  pangs 
of  despised  love,"  and  threatened  with  the  loss  of  reason 
by  the  violence  of  his  grief.  A  very  modest  instance,  but  it 
is  an  illustration  of  the  law.  Savonarola  furnishes  another. 
The  energy  of  hopeless  passion  has  been  a  thousand  and  ten 
thousand  times  converted  into  the  energy  of  public  spirit,  of 
political  sagacity,  of  triumphant  music,  poetry,  and  art.  Men 
learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song.  The  torrents, 
which,  if  not  diverted,  would  have  scoured  men's  lives  bare 
of  all  pleasant  verdure  and  all  fruitful  soil,  have  been  so 
economized  that  barren  places  —  thanks  to  their  fertilizing 
streams  —  have  laughed  for  joyousness  of  flower  and  fruit. 

As  with  the  energy  of  passionate  sorrow  and  of  hopeless 
love,  so  with  the  energy  of  disappointment  and  despair,  when 
darling  schemes  have  come  to  nought,  when  through  the 
stupidity  or  dishonesty  of  others,  or  some  lack  of  foresight  or 
persistence  in  ourselves,  the  plans  which  seemed  to  promise 
great  success  and  happiness  fall  flatter  than  a  house  of  cards. 

"  The  mill-wheel  of  the  human  heart 
Is  ever  going  round  : 
If  it  has  nothing  else  to  grind, 
It  must  itself  be  ground." 

And  how  often  does  it  grind  itself  away  in  useless  dust,  or 


io6  TJie  Conversion  of  Energy. 

till  it  is  shattered  by  its  own  monotony  of  senseless  motion 
generating  fervent  heat,  when  it  might  be  making  bread  of 
life  for  hungry  souls  !  There  are  men  and  women  who,  when 
their  cherished  plans  have  failed,  permit  the  energy  of  their 
disappointment  and  foreboding  to  wreak  itself  upon  them- 
selves in  silence  and  apart,  and  the  enormous  strength  and 
vitality  of  the  human  intellect  are  in  no  way  more  pathetically 
attested  than  by  its  ability  to  keep  itself  alive  and  regnant  in 
the  midst  of  such  stupendous  raids  upon  its  life.  But  there 
are  others  who  are  like  Antaeus  in  the  old  mythology,  of 
whom  it  is  related  that  from  every  fall  to  earth  he  gathered 
strength  for  the  encounter.  Not  until  the  battle  seems  to  go 
against  them  do  they  "put  on  terror  and  victory  like  a  robe," 
converting  the  energy  of  their  disappointment  and  humilia- 
tion into  an  energy  of  patience  and  resource  that  makes  the 
miserable  defeat  a  prelude  to  success  more  fair  and  glorious 
than  was  at  first  within  the  scope  of  their  desire.  "  Honor 
to  those  who  have  -  failed  !  "  our  burly  Whitman  cries.  Yes, 
if  for  no  other  reason  than  because  those  who  have  failed, 
but  have  refused  to  stay  failed^  are  those  who  have  succeeded 
best  of  all.  Only  the  brave  deserve  the  fair.  Success,  the 
glorious  maid,  cannot  be  wooed  and  won  in  any  temper  less 
resolved  than  that  of  Browning's  lover  when  he  sings  :  — 

"  Escape  me,  never,  beloved  ! 
So  long  as  the  world  contains  us  both, 

While  I  am  I,  and  you  are  you, 
I  the  loving  and  you  the  loth, 

While  the  one  eludes,  must  the  other  pursue. 

"  It  is  but  to  keep  the  nerves  at  strain, 
To  dry  one's  eyes  and  laugh  at  a  fall, 
And  baffled  get  up  to  begin  again. 

So  the  chase  takes  up  one's  life,  that's  all ; 
While,  look  but  once  from  your  furthest  bound. 

At  me  so  deep  in  the  dust  and  dark, 
No  sooner  the  old  hope  drops  to  the  ground 
Than  a  new  one,  straight  to  the  self-same  mark, 
I  shape  me  —  ever  removed." 


The  Conversion  of  Energy.  107 

This  lover's  temper  does  not  always  bring  about  success  in 
love,  as  this  world  reckons.  As  little  does  it  always  bring 
about  success  when  it  is  shown  upon  the  field  of  practical 
affairs.  But  this  at  least  is  sure  :  in  either  case,  the  man  is  a 
success.  He  may  not  win  the  special  object  of  his  heart's 
desire.  He  does  a  better  thing  than  that.  He  wins  the 
grace  of  character,  the  amplitude  of  life,  which  makes  of  him 
a  man  indeed.  The  strength  of  obstacles  which  he  has  not 
overcome,  but  which  he  has  resisted  manfully,  has  passed 
into  his  heart.  The  man  is  a  success.  And  better  this 
result,  a  hundred  times  over,  than  that,  while  winning  ever)' 
outward  victory,  the  man  should  be  a  failure  in  himself, —  a 
conjunction  which  is  not  infrequent  in  the  annals  of  the  past, 
nor  in  the  experience  of  the  latest  time. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  this  matter,  another  illustration 
of  this  law  of  transmutation,  the  most  serious  of  all,  the 
most  important :  the  energy  of  evil-doing  can  be  converted 
into  the  energy  of  righteousness.  That  was  not  such  an  ab- 
surdity as  it  was  perhaps  considered  at  the  time, —  the 
remark,  "If  our  friend  [a  man  remarkable  for  moral  excel- 
lence] were  not  such  a  good  man,  what  a  bad  man  he  would 
be !  "  Conversely,  it  might  almost  be  said  of  many  who  are 
not  remarkable  for  moral  excellence,  "  If  they  were  not  such 
bad  men,  what  good  men  they  would  be  !  "  They  cannot  do 
anything  by  halves.  There  is  in  them  a  fund  of  energy  which 
must  express  itself, —  if  not  in  bad  actions,  then  in  good. 
To  desist  from  evil-doing  and  so  reach  the  zero-point  of 
virtue  is  not  sufficient  for  these  spirits  who  are  so  strong  and 
masterful.  They  are  so  constituted  that  they  would  rather 
"  sin,  and  sin  valiantly,"  as  Luther  said,  than  be  like  those 
whom  Dante  saw,  whirling  about  the  outer  rim  of  hell, 
"  neither  for  God  nor  for  his  enemies."  Positive  evil  cannot 
be  expelled  from  human  natures  by  anything  less  forcible 
than  positive  good.  When  Buddha  said,  "  Hatred  ceases  not 
by  hatred  at  any  time,  hatred  ceases  by  love,"  doubtless  he 
had  in  mind  men's  mutual  relations ;  but  it  is  just  as  true  of 
the  relations  of  the  inner  life.     Not  by  hating  less  and  less 


io8  The  Conversion  of  Energy. 

down  to  the  zero-point  does  hatred  cease  in  human  hearts, 
but  through  some  counter-passion  of  exalted  love.  The  vices 
of  the  centuries,  for  the  most  part,  are  a  testimony  to  the 
feebleness  of  "  those  lesser  crimes,  half  converts  to  the 
right,"  —  the  virtues  of  conventional  religion.  If  those 
hardy  sinners  could  have  had  presented  to  them  the  ideal 
of  something  better  than  a  cloistered  virtue, —  "immortal 
garlands  not  to  be  run  for  without  dust  and  heat,"  —  they 
might  have  been  as  distinguished  for  their  good  as  for  their 
evil  deeds.  The  proverbial  expression,  "The  worse  the 
sinner,  the  better  the  saint,"  has  more  of  truth  in  it  than  it 
intends.  For  it  intends  only  that  the  greater  the  sin  re- 
pented of,  the  more  abject  will  be  the  humiliation ;  and 
abject  humiliation  was  for  many  centuries  the  essential  qual- 
ity of  saintliness,  and  is  so  regarded  still  by  many.  The 
truth  in  it  is  that  a  negative  and  self-satisfied  morality  is 
something  from  which  the  individual  and  the  community  have 
more  to  fear  than  from  certain  outbursts  of  impassioned 
wickedness.  This  was  the  thought  of  Jesus  when  he  told 
the  Pharisees,  the  models  of  negative  virtue  in  his  time, 
"The  publicans  and  harlots  shall  go  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  before  you  "  /  and  when  he  conceived  the  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son,  as  if  the  energy  of  the  prodigal's  reaction 
from  his  evil  ways  was  a  diviner  possibility  than  the  dead- 
level  moralism  of  his  elder  brother.  Elsewhere  in  the  Bible 
we  read  a  different  lesson  :  "  He  that  has  offended  in  the 
least  has  offended  in  all."  But  this  is  the  miserable  legality 
against  which  Jesus  threw  himself  with  all  the  energy  of  his 
sublime  contempt.  The  fault  of  the  adulterous  woman  was 
less  heinous  in  his  eyes  than  her  accusers'  zeal  of  accusation, 
or  than  the  bloodless  virtues  of  which  they  were  so  proud. 
For  the  good  that  was  in  her  evil  he  forgave  her,  saying, 
"  Go,  and  sin  no  more  !  "  But  the  principle,  "  He  that  has 
offended  in  the  least  has  offended  in  all,"  is  the  principle 
which,  embodied  in  society,  has  said  to  almost  every  sinful 
woman  since  the  time  of  Jesus,  "Go  and  sin  still  more:  go 
and   sin   hell-deep."     It  is   a  principle   which  has  been   re- 


The  Conversion  of  Energy.  109 

buked  and  shamed  a  million  times  unconsciously  by  men 
and  women,  the  aggregate  of  whose  virtue  —  spite  of  some 
great  offence,  it  may  be  more  than  one  —  is  infinitely  greater 
than  that  of  others  who  have  never  done  anything  wrong  \ 
no,  nor  for  that  matter,  anything  right, —  anything  not  merely 
negative. 

The  energy  of  evil-doing  can  be  converted  into  the  energy 
of  righteousness.  Yes,  but  not  without  the  intervention  of  a 
middle  term, —  not  self-contempt,  which  poisons  good  desire, 
but  noble  shame,  which  makes  it  pure  and  strong.  We  may 
not  continue  in  sin,  that  grace  of  character  may  abound. 

"Saint  Augustine,  well  hast  thou  said 
That  of  our  vices  we  can  frame 
A  ladder,  if  we  will  but  tread 

Beneath  our  feet  each  deed  of  shame." 

There  are  those  who  have  endeavored  to  keep  up  the  show 
of  hell  by  the  suggestion  that  human  nature  is  "  wax  to  re- 
ceive and  marble  to  retain  "  the  impression  of  its  own  evil 
deeds.  And,  where  there  is  the  consciousness  of  this  impres- 
sion, there  must  be  spiritual  torment.  And  there  are  those 
who  have  opposed  to  the  idea  of  divine  forgiveness  the  idea 
of  cause  and  effect.  Because  every  effect  must  have  its 
cause,  every  fault  must  have  its  retribution.  "What's  writ 
is  writ,  would  it  were  worthier "  ;  but  there  it  is  forever. 
Something  of  truth  there  is,  no  doubt,  in  these  expressions. 
But  there  is  other  truth  which  is  every  whit  as  true,  and  is, 
moreover,  full  of  encouragement  and  inspiration.  What's 
writ  is  writ;  but  something  further  can  be  written, —  yes,  and 
it  can  be  written  over  that  which  is  the  record  of  our  fault, 
as  in  the  palimpsests  of  former  times  men  wrote  one  thing 
above  another,  the  page  first  cleansed  with  purifying  tears. 
Men  who  have  erred  can  so  convert  the  energy  of  their 
consciousness  of  error  and  their  noble  shame  into  the 
energy  of  use  and  good  that  none  whose  good  opinion  is 
worth  having  will  think  of  them  less  kindly  or  with  less  of 
admiration   for  the  wrong   that   they  have  put   away ;    and, 


no  The  Conversion  of  Energy. 

better  still,  they  shall  be  able  to  forgive  themselves  as  freely 
as  they  would  another  for  faults  repented  of  and  cancelled 
by  enduring  righteousness. 

"  Oh,  not  the  nectarous  poppy  lovers  use, 
Nor  daily  labor's  dull  Lethean  spring, 
Oblivion  in  lost  angels  can  infuse 

To  the  soiled  glory  and  the  trailing  wing." 

Even  so  the  poet  comes  to  the  assistance  of  the  dogmatist 
in  his  endeavor  to  make  out  that  every  fault  in  us  is  forever 
a  deduction  from  the  sum  of  character  and  the  sum  of  happi- 
ness within  our  reach.  If  man  were  a  dead  mechanism,  it 
might  be  so;  but  he  is  a  living  organism,  and  it  is  not  so. 
Thank  Heaven,  there  are  poets  who  have  sung  a  more  in- 
spiriting and  gladdening  song !  "  They  say  best  men  are 
moulded  out  of  faults,"  is  Shakspere's  golden  phrase.  And 
it  is  certain  not  only  that  there  are  and  have  been  better 
men  with  faults  repented  of,  and  unrepented  of,  than  others 
without  fleck,  but  also  that  there  are  and  have  been  men 
much  better  with  some  very  serious  faults,  which  they  must 
painfully  remember  that  they  would  or  could  have  been  with- 
out such  faults.  For  these  have  broken  up  the  dull  stagna- 
tion of  their  lives.  They  have  wrought  in  them  a  noble 
shame  whose  energy  they  have  converted  into  an  energy  of 
high  behavior  and  beneficent  activity. 

"No  good  is  ever  lost  we  once  have  seen : 
We  always  may  be  what  we  might  have  been." 

No,  not  exactly  that,  but  something  just  as  good,  though 
different ;  and  something  better  oftentimes  than  if  we  had 
not  gone  astray;  and,  if  something  better,  then  something 
happier. 

But  must  not  the  evil  deed  be  always  an  accusing  memory  "i 
Yes,  but  I  can  conceive  that  men  should  sometimes  bless 
the  fault  by  whose  reactionary  force  they  have  been  driven 
in  upon  their  citadel  of  high  resolve.  So  fight  I  not  as  one 
that  beateth  the  air.     If  there  is  nothing  in  the  range  of  your 


The  Conversion  of  Energy.  ill 

experience  that  responds  to  what  I  have  affirmed,  if  you  have 
always  been  so  just  and  pure  and  kind  that  you  have  no 
regret  or  shame  whose  energy  you  can  transmute  into  heroic 
purpose,  into  stern  resolve,  into  a  high  devotion  and  a  holy 
will,  it  is  still  possible  that  you  may  bring  to  those  less 
fortunate,  if  they  are  so,  a  generous  expectation  that  shall  co- 
operate with  what  is' best  in  them  in  saving  them  from  what 

is  worst. 

Said  I  not  truly,  then,  that  whether  or  not  we  have  in  these 
relations  of  the  moral  life  a  natural  law  extended  into 
spiritual  things,  we  have  at  least  a  wonderful  analogy,  and 
one  that  is  of  various  suggestion  all  compact  ?  Wide  is  the 
range  of  illustration.  The  energy  of  disappointment  and  de- 
spair produced  by  limitation  and  defect,  the  energy  of  sorrow 
for  our  dead,  of  hopeless  passion  and  of  ruinous  loss,  the 
energy  of  noble  shame  for  good  things  left  undone  and  ill 
things  done, —  all  this  can  be  transmuted  into  energy  of  use 
and  good  and  helpful  holiness,  as  certainly  as  light  and  heat 
and  electricity  and  magnetism  and  chemical  affinity  and 
mechanical  force  can  be  transmuted  into  each  other.  It  is  a 
gospel  of  deliverance,  of  hope  and  cheer.  It  cannot  be  but 
that  it  has  for  some  of  you,  has  or  will  have  some  day,  a 
meaning  answering  to  your  need.  Let  this  great  law  which 
has  so  many  illustrations  have  unimpeded  scope  in  the 
economy  of  your  joy  and  sorrow,  peace  and  pain.  So  good 
shall  come,  if  not  straightway,  or  evidently  to  you  at  any 
time,  yet  soon  or  late  to  some  one  in  God's  world. 

"  Not  out  of  any  cloud  or  sky 
Will  thy  good  come  to  prayer  or  cry. 
Let  the  great  forces,  wise  of  old, 
Have  their  whole  way  with  thee, 
Crumble  thy  heart  from  its  hold, 
Drown  thy  life  in  the  sea. 

"  And  ages  hence,  some  day, 
The  love  thou  gavest  a  child. 
The  dream  in  a  midnight  wild, 
The  word  thou  would'st  not  say, — 
Or  in  a  whisper  no  one  dared  to  hear, — 
Shall  gladden  earth  and  bring  the  golden  year." 


TWO  MEANINGS  OF  RELIGION. 


"  The  holiest  of  all  holidays  are  those 
Kept  by  ourselves  in  silence  and  apart ; 
The  secret  anniversaries  of  the  heart, 
When  the  full  river  of  feeling  overflows, — 
The  happy  days  unclouded  to  their  close, 
The  sudden  joys  that  out  of  darkness  start 
As  flames  from  ashes  ;  swift  desires  that  dart 
Like  swallows  singing  down  each  wind  that  blows. 
White  as  the  gleam  of  a  receding  sail, 
White  as  a  cloud  that  floats  and  fades  in  air, 
White  as  the  whitest  lily  on  a  stream, 
These  tender  memories  are, —  a  Faiiy  Tale 
Of  some  enchanted  land  we  know  not  where. 
But  lovely  as  a  landscape  in  a  dream." 

We  all  have  such  holidays.  The  nth  of  September  is  one 
of  mine.  It  brings  back  to  me  the  day  I  went  away  from 
home  to  school  for  the  first  time  in  1857,  and  the  day  of  my 
first  preaching  here  in  this  church  and  at  this  desk  in  1864. 
I  keep  it  tenderly  wherever  I  may  be.  I  remember  how  I 
kept  it  at  Lugano,  the  delightful  city  on  the  Italian  lake  of 
that  name, —  how  that  first  rainy  morning  here  came  back  to 
me,  and  the  faces  that  have  vanished  into  the  infinite  azure, 
and  the  voices  that  are  forever  hushed.  And  a  fortnight  ago 
I  kept  it  all  day  long,  and  especially  in  the  evening,  when  I 
sat  in  the  doorway  of  my  summer  tent,  and  looked  out  upon 
the  western  hills,  behind  which  the  sun  had  just  withdrawn. 
The  shadowed  hills  were  backed  against  a  sky  of  gold  that 
softened  upward  into  amber,  rose,  and  violet,  until  at  length  it 
merged  into  the  pale  and  then  into  the  deeper  blue.  But  I 
could  hardly  see  the  sky  for  the  faces  that  shone  out  upon  me 


2  Tzvo  Meanings  of  Religion, 

from  the  deep  of  memory's  sunset  air, —  not  only  those  that 
have  put  on  immortality,  but  those  of  youth  and  maid  that 
have  grown  stronger  and  better  with  the  lapse  of  time,  and 
those  of  very  little  folk  who  were  new  to  earth  at  my  first  com- 
ing here,  and  who  now  talk  politics,  and  vote,  and  love  and 
marry,  and  have  children  of  their  own,  and  are  doing  the 
work  of  full-grown  men  and  women  "  in  this  loud,  stunning 
tide  of  human  care  and  crime." 

And  with  this  thinking  of  faces  and  of  friends,  and  of  the 
sad  or  joyful  changes  time  had  wrought  upon  our  company, 
there  came  the  thought  of  what  I  had  done,  or  tried  to  do,  as 
a  minister  of  religion  in  these  eight-and-twenty  years.  And, 
as  I  thought  along  this  line,  there  came  into  my  mind  the 
two  derivations  of  the  word  Religion,  which  have  enlisted  the 
approval  and  defence  of  different  students  of  this  matter. 
One  set  is  convinced  that  the  word  comes  from  reiego,  which 
means  to  reread ;  and  another  set  is  equally  convinced  — 
and  much  more  rationally,  it  seems  to  me  —  that  it  comes 
from  religo,  which  means  to  bind  back.  This  would  make 
the  original  meaning  of  the  word  a  ritualistic  meaning,  some 
bond  of  ceremony  or  observance  ;  and  it  is  much  likelier  that 
some  such  meaning  attached  to  it  in  the  early  times  than  that 
it  had  the  meaning  of  rereading,  which  is  much  more  ab- 
struse, and  therefore  much  less  likely  to  have  been  enter- 
tained by  primitive  and  simple  men,  if  those  were  such  who 
first  used  the  word  religio  for  those  things  which  expressed 
the  sense  of  their  relation  to  an  unseen  power  or  powers. 

Of  course,  it  does  not  follow  that,  if  either  origin  could  be 
fixed  with  certainty,  that  certainty  would  fix  the  meaning  of  the 
word  "  religion  "  for  all  time.  The  New  English  Dictionary 
makes  nothing  plainer  than  that  the  meaning  of  words  is  one 
of  the  most  variable  of  all  things,  and  that  to  hold  one  to  the 
original  meaning  of  a  word  would  be  frequently  embarrassing, 
if  not  absurd.  "  Paul,  a  villain  of  Jesus  Christ,"  read  the 
earlier  translations  of  the  New  Testament.  Villain  meant 
servant  then.  Insist  upon  its  meaning  that  or  nothing  now, 
and  many  a  politician,  manufacturer,  merchant,  editor,  would 


Tiuo  Meanings  of  Religion.  3 

be  going  around  without  his  proper  designation.  Then,  too, 
religio  was  a  Latin  word  ;  and  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
Latin  people  should  be  intrusted  for  all  time  with  the 
meaning  of  the  facts  we  call  religious,  especially  as  they  had 
little  genius  for  religion. 

Whichever  way  it  was,  the  fact  is  clear  enough  that,  in 
its  historic  manifestation,  religion  has  been  at  one  time  and 
another  a  rereading  and  a  binding-back,  justifying  either 
derivation  as  a  symbol  of  the  concrete  reality,  whatever  phil- 
ological science  may  decide.  Nay,  more :  at  one  and  the 
same  time  it  has  been  both  together,  not  in  friendly  unity, 
but  in  strenuous  opposition.  Might  we  not  even  say  that  at 
every  period  of  history  there  has  been  a  religo  and  a  relego 
interpretation  of  religion,  and  a  party  representing  each  in- 
terpretation,—  one  for  binding  back  men's  thought  and  feel- 
ing, ritual  and  life,  to  some  traditional  standard,  and  another 
for  rereading  the  facts  of  life,  the  lessons  of  experience,  the 
mystery  of  the  fair  and  teeming  world  ? 

The  religo  men,  the  traditionalists,  have    always  been  in 
the  majority.     They  have  been  the  ecclesiastical  party ;  the 
priests  as  opposed  to  the  prophets,  as  one  sees  them  in  the 
Old   Testament ;    the  Pharisees   and    Sadducees,  as  we  see- 
them   in  the   New  Testament,   opposing   the    free    spirit    of: 
Jesus.     And   Christianity  had    no   sooner   begun  its  course-: 
than  the  same  difference  began  to  appear  within  its  boun- 
daries,—  the  Jerusalem  party  bent  on  binding  back  the  nas- 
cent faith  and  worship  to  the  Jewish   law  and    ceremonial, 
and    Paul    as    firmly   bent    on    rereading    and    revising   the 
traditional  inheritance.     And  from  that  time  to  this  the  re- 
readers  have  always  been  the  heretics,  the  schismatics,  and 
the  religo  folk  have  been  the  people  of  the  creeds  and  cate- 
chisms, the  councils   and  the  inquisitions.     And   they  have 
put  the  rereaders  to  death  with  fire  and  sword,  buried  them 
alive  in  dungeons,  expatriated  them,  despoiled  them  of  their 
possessions  or,  when  these  things  were  no  longer  possible  for 
a  world  which,  though  lame  and  blind,  does  somehow  stum- 
ble  toward   the    light,   visited    them   with    every  manner  of 


4  Two  Meanings  of  Religion.  • 

social  disability  and  disrespect.  It  is  the  rereaders  of  relig- 
ion that  we  like  to  read  about;  and,  when  I  say  "we,"  I 
mean  all  of  us.  For  you  will  notice  that,  in  the  long  run,  it 
is  the  men  who  think  for  themselves  who  are  read  and 
thought  about  by  the  succeeding  generations ;  and  a  man 
cannot  think  for  himself  without  being  more  or  less  hereti- 
cal ;  even  John  Calvin,  it  appears,  being  more  heretical 
concerning  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  judged  by  his  own 
standards  of  perfection,  than  Michael  Servetus  whom  he  put 
to  death.  Why,  almost  all  the  names  religious  people  care 
about  were  heretical  in  their  day  and  generation,  Luther  and 
Calvin,  Baxter  and  Taylor,  Edwards  and  Hopkins,  Fox  and 
Wesley,  and  one  greater  than  any  of  these,  greater  than  all 
of  them, —  Jesus,  the  son  of  Joseph,  the  carpenter  of  Naz- 
areth, the  prophet  of  Galilee,  the  martyr  of  Jerusalem. 

But  this,  too,  I  would  have  you  notice  :  that  the  relego  peo- 
ple have  often  been  religo  people  at  the  same  time  ;  at  the 
same  time  for  rereading  the  documents  of  religion  and  its 
institutions,  and  for  binding  back  the  thought  and  purpose 
of  the  world  to  some  venerable  standard  of  the  past.  Even 
the  most  radical  reformers  frequently  congratulate  them- 
selves that  they  can  claim  the  sanction  of  a  venerable  an- 
tiquity. If  we  may  trust  the  account  in  Matthew,  Jesus 
declared  that  he  came  not  to  build  anew,  but  to  rebuild  the 
ancient  verities.  And  all  the  Christian  reformers  in  their 
time  —  Luther,  Fox,  Wesley,  Channing,  and  even  Parker  — 
have  honestly  conceived  their  work  to  be  the  recovery  of  a 
primitive  Christianity,  and  the  shaping  of  their  individual 
lives,  and  the  common  life  of  Church  and  State,  according  to 
its  law.  The  late  Cardinal  Newman,  in  his  attempt  to  re- 
form the  Church  of  England,  found  his  ecclesiastical  ideal  in 
the  Church  of  the  fourth  century.  He  was  a  rereader  par 
excellence:  he  would  reread  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  so  that 
they  should  be  good  Roman  doctrine.  But  no  man  was 
ever  more  for  binding  back  the  present  to  the  beliefs  and 
ceremonies  of  the  past.  If  a  Father  of  the  fourth  century 
had  written  so  or  $o^  it  was  for  him  as  if  God  had  spoken  it 


Two  Meanings  of  Religion.  5 

in  his  ear.  But  lie  was  only  one  of  many  to  whom  the  study  of 
religion  has  been  the  revising  of  a  text  by  comparing  it  with 
old  manuscripts, —  the  6\de.st pf-ima  facie  the  best.  They  are 
students  of  a  palimpsest,  where  one  thing  has  been  written 
over  another ;  and  what  they  are  after  is  to  get  at  the  orig- 
inal writing,  and  make  that  a  standard  of  belief  and  action, 
and  bind  back  to  it  the  faithless  world.  But,  alas  !  the  dif- 
ferent reformers  have  not  agreed  as  to  the  original  reading ! 
Some  of  them  have  said  it  was  one  thing,  and  some  have 
said  it  was  another.  Luther's  reading  is  not  that  of  Fox, 
nor  Wesley's  that  of  Channing  or  Parker.  Nevertheless,  it 
must  be  recognized  that  these  reformers  have  generally 
been  nearer  to  the  original  reading  than  the  dominant 
churches  of  their  respective  times,  and  they  have  done  well 
to  try  to  hold  men  back  to  that  reading,  to  try  to  shape  their 
lives  according  to  its  law. 

For  it  is  not,  as  our  fiercer  radicals  and  destructives  some- 
times think,  as  if  the  past  had  in  it  no  permanent  elements, 
against  which  the  teeth  of  time  may  break  themselves, 
but  which  they  cannot  break.  That  was  a  very  common 
notion  just  about  a  century  ago.  The  policy  of  the  French 
Revolutionists  was  not  unlike  that  of  a  certain  worthy  whom 
I  knew  of  old,  who  could  not  agree  with  his  butcher  or  baker 
as  to  their  score.  "  Wipe  it  all  out,  and  begin  again,"  said 
he,  suiting  the  action  to  the  word.  And  the  French  Revolu- 
tionists wiped  it  all  out  —  in  blood.  But  how  soon  they  found 
the  old  things  coming  back  !  What  was  the  Committee  of 
Safety  but  another  Inquisition,  with  Marat  or  Robespierre 
for  grand  inquisitor.  But  the  good  lasts  equally  with  the 
bad  ;  and  it  is  the  fool's  notion  of  progress  that  each  age  or 
generation  is  an  improvement  upon  each  and  all  that  have 
preceded  it.  For  all  our  boasted  civilization,  what  can  we 
show,  with  all  our  industrv  and  wealth  and  vast  material  sue- 

'  ml 

cess,  that  can  compare  with  Raphael's  pictures  or  with 
Shakspere's  plays,  with  the  cathedrals  of  the  ^Middle  Age 
and  the  temples  with  which  Athens  crowned  her  hills,  and 
the  "  shapes  of  lucid  stone  '*  which  they  enshrined  ?     But  the 


6  Two  Meanings  of  Religion. 

men  who  caused  these  things  had  not  the  comforts  and  con- 
veniences of  modern  life.  No;  but  they  had  what,  perhaps, 
was  better, —  the  ability  to  do  without  these  comforts  and 
conveniences,  to  laugh  at  wind  and  weather,  "to  scorn  de- 
lights, and  live  laborious  days."  And  there  are  poems  and 
other  writings  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  past  that 
make  the  statues  ugly  and  the  temples  dim  ;  and,  better  still, 
actions  of  such  beseeching  loveliness  that  no  age  can  wither 
and  no  custom  stale  their  sweet  and  perfect  charm.  Let  the 
rereading  be  as  brave  as  possible,  alas  for  the  religion  that 
does  not,  whatever  is  reread,  bind  back  its  friends  and  vo- 
taries to  words  and  deeds  that  have  no  merely  local  or  tem- 
poral significance,  but  are  good  for  every  land  the  sun  doth 
visit,  and  for  every  time  he  measures  on  his  ceaseless  round ! 

And  now,  in  the  light  of  these  general  reflections,  let  us 
look  at  our  own  eight-and-twenty  years  together,  and  see 
how  they  have  stood  related  to  these  two  meanings  of  relig- 
ion, the  rereading  and  the  binding  back,  and  see  whether  the 
religion  we  have  been  endeavoring  to  foster  here  has  had  the 
one  meaning  or  the  other;  or  (if  haply  it  has  blent  the  two 
in  one)  whether  it  has  done  this  in  good  proportions,  and 
attained  a  good  result. 

One  thing  is  sure  :  that,  if  we  have  not  done  a  good 
deal  of  rereading  in  our  religion  here,  we  have  been  very 
strangely  isolated  from  the  general  drift  and  motion  of  the 
time.  For  by  nothing  else  have  these  years,  along  which  we 
have  walked  together,  been  so  strongly  characterized  in  the 
world  about  us  as  by  their  rereading  of  the  natural  world 
and  human  history,  especially  that  part  of  the  latter  which 
transpired  in  Judea  at  the  beginning  of  our  Christian  era, 
and  for  some  centuries  before  the  event  of  Jesus'  ministry. 
It  may  be  safely  said  that  never  at  any  time  in  the  world's 
history  —  not  forgetting  such  great  epochs  as  the  Protestant 
Revolution  and  the  first  Christian  century  —  has  such  a 
change  come  over  men's  ideas  and  opinions  of  the  most 
important  objects  of  their  thought.  In  1864  the  great 
work  of  Darwin  was  only  five  years  old,  and  had  attained 


Two  Meanings  of  Religion.  y 

only  the  most  limited  recognition  of  the  scientific  world ; 
while,  as  for  the  theological,  it  had  hardly  anything  for  it 
but  opposition  and  contempt.  But,  when  in  1880  Profes- 
sor Huxley  wrote  of  "  The  Coming  of  Age  of  the  '  Origin 
of  Species,' "  already  the  scientific  opposition  had  entirely 
ceased,  except  in  quarters  where  it  did  not  really  count ;  and 
the  theologians  had  for  a  long  time  been  busy  adjusting  their 
old  theology  to  the  new  science,  and  finding  chapter  and  verse 
for  it  in  the  Bible,  where  it  had  only  waited  a  few  thousand 
years  for  science  to  discover  it  elsewhere  with  infinite 
patience  of  research,  in  order  to  break  silence  and  declare, 
"  Why,  we  have  been  right  here  in  hiding  all  the  time." 
The  theological  readjustment  made  necessary  by  the  Darwin- 
ian doctrine,  and  more  emphatically  by  the  general  doctrine 
of  Evolution,  of  which  that  is  a  part,  has  not  been  less  im- 
portant than  that  required  by  the  changed  conditions  of  the 
Copernican  astronomy.  .  That  changed  the  centre  of  human- 
ity. This  has  changed  the  centre  of  Deity.  Before  Coper- 
nicus the  earth  had  been  the  centre  of  the  sidereal  s\'stem, 
and  man  the  centre  of  the  moral  universe.  The  other  stars 
w^ere  but  his  evening  lamps.  The  "  scheme  of  salvation  " 
took  no  account  of  any  world  but  this.  ]\Ian's  centrality 
vanished  with  the  Copernican  astronomy.  God's  centrality 
has  been  established  by  our  later  science.     Erewhile  he 

"  sat  outside  to  scan 
The  spheres  that  'neath  his  finger  circling  ran." 

He  was  an  external,  mechanical  Creator,  and  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  evolution  doctrine  he  found  his  occupation 
gone.  The  making  of  the  world  had  been  by  laws  and 
processes  which  from  the  chaos  to  the  cosmos,  from  the 
moneron  to  the  man,  had  known  no  break  or  intervention 
from  without.  A  God  so  reft  of  all  activity  threatened  to 
vanish  altogether,  and  did  so  for  the  more  scientific  and 
intelligent,  but  only  straightway  to  reappear  as  the  imma- 
nent, indwelling,  and  Eternal  Life  of  all  the  universe  of  men 
and  things.     This  was  at  first  the  heresy  of  a  few,  but  it  is 


8  Two  Meanings  of  Religioti. 

now  the  gospel  of  a  great  and  ever  greatening  company. 
Long  since  it  burst  the  precincts  of  our  Unitarian  churches 
and  invaded  the  most  orthodox,  whose  priests  and  bishops 
only  a  little  while  ago  contended  that  the  fossils  of  the 
various  strata  and  the  bones  of  extinct  animals  were  manu- 
factured by  the  Mechanic  Deity  just  as  they  are,  either  to 
see  what  he  could  do  or  for  the  trying  of  our  faith. 

This  wonderful  rereading  of  the  natural  world  and  of  the 
theological  system  corresponding  to  the  mechanical  con- 
ception of  the  world,  for  all  persons  capable  of  seeing  things 
in  their  relations,  with  any  intuitive  perception  of  what 
things  go  together  and  agree  and  what  things  do  not,  must 
have  implied  the  utter  and  complete  inadequacy  of  the 
traditional  belief  in  Christianity  as  a  supernatural  revelation. 
But  this  belief  has  been  subjected  not  only  to  the  indirect 
destruction  of  the  new  natural  science  and  philosophy,  but 
equally  and  at  the  same  time  to  the  direct  annihilation  of 
the  new  and  higher  criticism,  which,  beginning  with  the  work 
of  Niebuhr  upon  Roman  history,  has  at  length  subjected  the 
Old  Testament  and  New  to  the  same  principles  and  methods 
of  investigation,  and  demonstrated  that  neither  in  the  form 
nor  the  contents,  neither  in  the  record  nor  in  what  is  re- 
corded, is  there  a  hint  or  sign  of  supernatural  interference 
or  of  supernatural  action,  unless  all  natural  things  are  at  the 
same  time  supernatural,  in  virtue  of  the  immianent  divinity 
who  worketh  all  and  in  all. 

Such  having  been  the  general  record  of  rereading  during 
the  last  thirty  years, —  not  that  the  rereading  began  within 
this  period,  but  that  during  it  it  has  received  a  vast  accelera- 
tion,—  said  I  not  truly  that,  if  we  have  not  done  a  good  deal 
of  rereading  in  our  religion  here,  we  have  been  very 
strangely  isolated  from  the  general  drift  and  motion  of  the 
time  ?  But  we  have  done  a  good  deal  of  rereading ;  and,  if 
we  have  been  isolated,  it  has  been  less  and  less  with  the 
advancing  time,  and  it  has  never  been  from  or  by  those  of 
the  rereading  disposition.  It  was  at  first  from  and  by  those 
who   strenuously   opposed   themselves   to  the   new  readings 


Two  Meanings  of  Religion,  g 

of  the  naturalists  and  critics.  But  from  these  we  have  been 
isolated  less  and  less,  until  we  have  come  upon  a  time  when 
thousands  of  the  most  cultivated  and  intelligent  preachers  in 
orthodox  pulpits,  and  professors  in  orthodox  seminaries  of 
learning,  and  laymen  in  well-cushioned  pews,  more  or  less 
openly  accept  the  views  which  were  anathema  to  them  a 
quarter  of  a  century  back,  denounced  as  atheism  and  infi- 
delity by  the  more  orthodox,  and  even  in  our  Unitarian 
churches  regarded  with  the  gravest  possible  suspicion  less 
than  half  that  time  ago. 

In  the  mean  time,  what  has  been  most  characteristic  of  our 
position  here  in  our  modest  work  together  has,  I  think,  been 
this  :  that  the  new  readings  have  not  been  a  bitter  medicine 
to  us,  but  wine  and  milk ;  yea,  sweet  as  honey  to  our  taste. 
Somehow,  in  God's  good  providence,  it  has  been  ordered  for 
us  that  we  should  not  strive  against  the  dawning  light,  but 
welcome  it  with  joyful  acclamation ;  that  we  should  not  en- 
deavor to  minimize  the  force  and  meaning  of  the  new  inter- 
pretations, but  should  cheerfully  take  them  at  their  full 
value,  finding  in  them  the  deepest  satisfaction  and  the  ut- 
most joy  and  peace,  God  forever  in  the  world  better  than 
one  who  "sitteth  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth,  and  the  inhabi- 
tants thereof  are  as  grasshoppers,"  better  than  any  outside 
deity  who  made  the  world  and  got  well  rid  of  it  some  sixty 
centuries  ago,  yet  must  return  to  tinker  it  from  time  to  time, 
his  natural  incarnation  in  humanity  infinitely  better  than 
his  supernatural  incarnation  in  "Jesus,  who  is  called  the 
Christ,"  and  not  putting,  as  that  does,  a  shameful  brand  on 
all  the  other  mothers  of  the  centuries  and  the  children  born 
to  them  in  lawful  love.  And  his  self-revelation  in  all  nature 
and  all  history  and  all  human  goodness,  truth,  and  love,  is 
better,  immeasurably  better,  than  even  the  Bible  can  contain 
or  any  course  of  history  or  lofty  character  it  can  report  within 
its  narrow  bounds.  Take  it  for  what  it  is, —  the  unconscious 
record  of  a  thousand  years  of  Hebrew  striving  after  God, — 
and  the  Bible  cannot  easily  be  prized  too  much ;  but  take  it 
as   a  complete  account  of  God's  self-revelation,  and   it  be- 


I  o  Tivo  Mea  n  lugs  of  R  eligion . 

comes  a  spot  upon  the  sun,  and  to  speak  of  "  the  Bible  and 
nature,"  or  "  the  Bible  and  humanity,"  as  if  here  were 
terms  of  proximate  significance,  with  the  Bible  in  the  lead, 
is  miserable  impiety.  To  say  "  the  Bible  and  nature "  or 
"  the  Bible  and  humanity  "  is  like  saying  "  the  drop  and  the 
ocean,"  as  if  the  drop  were  not  a  part  of  the  ocean,  as  if  it 
were  not  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  boundless  whole. 

Yes  :  we  have  been  rereaders  here  together  all  these  years, 
and  in  our  new  reading  of  the  world  and  human  life  and 
Christianity  we  have  had  great  satisfaction  and  delight. 
But  with  the  rereading  has  there  been  no  binding  back  ?  I 
have  spoken  ill  what  I  have  already  spoken  if  I  have  not 
implied  that  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of  this  ;  of  binding 
back  to  God,  not  by  a  tether  stretching  back  six  thousand  or 
two  thousand  years,  and  getting  constantly  more  tenuous  in 
the  wear  of  time  and  tide,  but  by  a  present  and  immediate 
bond,  as  of  man's  body  to  his  spirit,  at  each  minute  of  the 
day ;  the  moral  law,  no  arbitrary  mandate  of  antiquity,  but 
generated  by  a  moral  universe,  and  growing  ever  with  its 
growth  from  age  to  age.  Nor  less  has  our  rereading  been 
implicitly  a  binding  back  to  man,  to  what  is  manliest  in  him, 
greatest  in  his  character  and  history,  and  so  to  him  of  Naza- 
reth, too  long  obscured  by  mythological  fancies  and  theo- 
logical speculations,  "  above  the  heads  of  his  reporters,"  to 
every  deeper  insight  of  the  scholars  shown  in  more  engaging 
light,  with  a  more  human  aspect,  voice,  and  gesture,  drawing 
all  men  to  himself,  so  making  good  the  prophecy  of  those 
words  attributed  to  him  in  the  New  Testament :  "  If  I  be 
lifted  up,  I  will  draw  all  men  unto  me."  But  whereas  the 
traditionalist  finds  in  the  past  as  such  the  standard  of  perfec- 
tion, or  in  some  few  years  or  centuries  of  it  dissevered  from 
the  rest,  and  would  bind  men  back  to  these  as  it  were  with 
cords  of  twisted  iron,  we  have  not  so  learned  the  better  way. 
For  us  this  is  to  search  the  past  for  whatever  is  most  just 
and  noble,  sweet  and  fair,  and  then  bind  back  ourselves  and 
those  we  love  and  those  whom  we  would  help  to  that.  And 
of  such  there   is  no  lack.     It  might  be  extravagant  to  say 


Two  Meanings  of  Religion.  1 1 

that,  if  it  were  all  recorded,  "  the  world  itself  could  not  con- 
tain the  books  that  would  be  written  "  ;  but  it  would  be  safe 
to  say  that,  of  what  has  been  recorded,  there  is  enough  to 
make  up  the  bulk  of  many  Bibles,  and  every  noble  thought 
and  action  in  the  Bible  is  recorded  with  the  rest.  And 
there  is  no  imaginary  line  between  sacred  history  and  pro- 
fane in  this  inclusion.  It  is  all  sacred,  equally  that  which 
exhibits  the  struggles  and  the  heroisms  of  the  soldiers  and 
the  martyrs  of  political  liberty  and  political  reform,  and  that 
w^hich  exhibits  the  struggles  and  the  sacrifices  of  the  saints 
and  heroes  of  religion.  To  all  these  I  have  sought  to  bind  you 
back,  never  happier  than  when  telling  you  the  story  of  some 
lofty  spirit,  if  haply  I  might  lure  you  to  the  height  which  was 
his  or  her  mount  of  vision,  and  breathe  with  you  its  fresh 
and  bracing  air.  And  how  often  have  we,  standing  here,  re- 
read the  lives  of  our  beloved  friends  in  that  mysterious  light 
which  we  call  death,  and  bound  back  our  consciences  and 
our  affections,  our  reverence  and  our  will,  to  the  remembered 
truth  and  beauty  of  their  lives  ! 

Here  I  might  make  an  end  and  none  the  less  your 
thoughts  would  go  right  on  to  be  with  those  who,  since  we 
parted  in  the  early  summer,  have  been  parted  from  the 
company  of  earth's  loftiest  spirits.  This  is  no  time  and  here 
is  not  the  place  for  any  reading  or  rereading  of  the  lives  of 
Whittier  and  Curtis;  and  what  need  is  there  for  me  to  seek  to 
bind  you  back  to  them  in  any  surer  loyalty  than  will  be  the 
natural  motion  of  your  grieved  and  faithful  hearts  ?  They 
were  rereaders  both  of  the  old  texts  of  politics  and  religion, 
and  found  in  them  brave  new  meanings  for  the  poor,  sorrow- 
ful, and  blundering  time ;  and  who  more  eloquent  than  they 
to  bind  men  back  to  everything  that  is  most  noble  and  inspir- 
ing in  the  traditions  of  the  past !  For  these  men,  so  different 
in  some  respects,  had  much  in  common  in  their  lives.  Curtis 
was,  of  all  men,  the  most  easily  at  home  in  any  company  of 
cultivated  people,  without  the  least  assumption  of  that  supe- 
riority which  others  willingly  accorded  him  ;  while  Whittier 
was  the  shyest  of    the  shy  in    social  companies.     But  they 


12  Tzvo  Meanings  of  Religion. 

were  very  much  alike  in  the  extreme  simplicity  of  their  daily 
lives,  in  their  complete  indifference  to  all  those  showy  and 
luxurious  things  which  are  so  generally  attractive  to  the  mod- 
ern man.  And,  though  one  found  in  poetry  and  the  other  in 
oratory  the  most  suitable  organ  of  expression,  Whittier  was  as 
eloquent  in  his  poetry  as  Curtis  in  his  orations.  Each  liked 
to  sound  the  changes  on  resounding  names ;  and  how  many 
of  Whittier's  poems  are  ringing  speeches  none  the  less  be- 
cause they  are  obedient  to  the  laws  of  rhyme  and  rhythm  ? 
But  to  this  formal  similarity  was  added  one  of  a  much  deeper 
strain.  The  "  winged  hippogriff,  Reform,"  invited  both  of 
them  to  ride.  Whittier  was  the  first  to  accept  the  invitation, 
naturally,  as  being  by  seventeen  years  the  older  man  ;  but 
then,  too,  he  came  a  little  sooner  to  himself  after  brief  trial 
of  such  husks  as  Caleb  Cushing  fed  to  his  political  retainers. 
Whittier  had  been  writing  Abolitionist  editorials  and  singing 
Abolitionist  songs  for  twenty-five  years  when  Curtis  joined 
the  great  crusade  in  1856.  When  the  war  was  over  and 
slavery  had  been  abolished,  though  he  and  Whittier  were  re- 
formers still,  they  moved  on  different  lines, —  Whittier  intent 
to  tame  the  savagery  of  the  traditional  theology  and  human- 
ize its  God,  and  Curtis  to  expose  and  to  destroy  the  system 
of  partisan  reward  and  punishment  in  the  civil  service  of  the 
government.  But,  with  different  gifts,  there  was  the  same 
spirit,  and  each  was  interested  heartily  in  the  other's  work. 
Curtis  was  easily  first  in  the  political  reform.  Had  Whittier 
a  second  in  the  religious  field  .?  "  Let  me  write  the  songs  of 
a  people,  and  I  do  not  care  who  makes  its  "  — "  laws," 
says  the  proverb,  and  I  say  —  "theology."  And  I  doubt  if 
Beecher,  or  any  of  the  theologians,  has  done  so  much  to 
"  ring  out  the  old,  ring  in  the  new "  and  better  thoughts 
of  God  and  man,  and  life  and  death,  and  what  is  after 
death,  as  Whittier  has  done  with  his  glad  songs  of  faith  and 
hope  and  love. 

Neither  Whittier  nor  Curtis  was  a  stranger  to  these  walls 
and  to  the  little  company  that  gathers  here  from  week  to 
week.      But  Whittier's  presence  with  us  here  was  only  in  the 


Two  Meariings  of  Religion.  13 

holy  spirit  of  his  hymns  and  spiritual  songs  ;  and  ii  has  al- 
ways been  a  pleasant  thought  to  me  that,  as  we  have  sung 
them,  our  debt  was  not  to  Whittier  alone,  but  also  to  Samuel 
Longfellow,  the  first  minister  of  our  society,  who  has  done 
more  than  any  one  else  to  give  the  thought  and  feeling  of 
Whittier  currency  in  our  churches.  For  you  will  notice  that 
Whittier  wrote  few  hymns  as  such.  He  wrote  too  easily  to 
stop  at  the  fourth  or  fifth  stanza.  The  hymns  we  sing  as  his 
have  for  the  most  part  been  taken,  here  a  little  and  there  a 
little,  from  much  longer  pieces;  and  Mr.  Longfellow  has  gen- 
erally done  the  work,  and,  next  after  him,  Mr.  Gannett. 
They  are  in  all  the  hymnals,  all  the  churches,  lifting  up  the 
hearts  of  men  to  holier  things. 

But  Mr.  Curtis's  frequent  presence  with  us  here  was  not 
only  in  the  spirit.  How  often  we  have  crowded  all  these 
seats  and  aisles  to  hear  his  genial  characterization  and  his 
lofty  praise  of  men  whom  he  admired  and  loved, —  Thackeray, 
Dickens,  Phillips,  Sumner,  Sidney,  Bryant, — or  some  such 
noble  plea  as  his  "  Scholar  in  Politics  "  or  his  "  Political 
Morality"  !  Nor  could  we  have  any  feast  of  honor  or  com- 
memoration here  without  him  to  grace  it  with  his  presence  and 
his  speech,  witnessing  not  more  his  personal  kindness  to  you 
and  me  than  his  devotion  to  our  Unitarian  faith,  which  he 
ever  apprehended  in  the  broadest  and  the  deepest  way. 
How  generous  he  was  with  us,  this  busiest  of  men ! 

For  myself  I  dare  not  try  to  say  how  sweet  and  precious  I 
have  esteemed  the  privilege  of  knowing  well  this  peerless  gen- 
tleman, and  seeing  much  of  him  in  the  personal  relations  of 
the  social  circle  and  his  quiet  home.  The  possibilities  of 
human  nature  have  been  exalted  to  my  mind  by  this  experi- 
ence. I  did  not  know  before  that  there  could  be  such  union 
of  the  utmost  strength  and  the  most  perfect  gentleness  in  one 
warm  and  loving  heart.  I  did  not  know  before  that  one  could 
be  so  great,  so  honored  and  admired,  and  yet  so  simple  as  to 
make  you  forget  all  about  it  when  you  met  him  face  to  face, 
nor  that  one  could  get  so  many  wounds  from  faithful  friends 
and  others  in  the  political  arena,  and  yet  show  no  scars.     He 


14  Two  Meanings  of  Religion. 

was,  I  know,  a  publicist  outside  of  politics.  But  no  official 
station  could  have  corrupted  him,  though  it  had  been  the 
highest  in  the  land.  Happy  shall  be  the  nation  which  he 
loved  when  its  old  men  shall  see  his  visions  of  political  mo- 
rality, and  its  young  men  shall  dream  his  dreams  of  stainless 
rectitude  till  they  come  true  in  them  as  they  came  true  in 
him  !  Whittier  and  Curtis  !  —  two  more  among  the  great  im- 
mortals who  have  helped  us  to  reread  the  meaning  of  the 
world,  and  who  now  as  ever  will  bind.;back  our  spirits  to  the 
service  of  all  things  that  are  beautiful  and  good  and  true. 


I 


THE  UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY. 


My  subject  is  "The  Undiscovered  Country."  That  is 
Shakspere's  phrase  ;  and  for  a  text  you  will  find  one,  which 
might,  perhaps,  be  set  more  fitly  at  the  end  than  at  the  be- 
ginning of  my  sermon,  in  the  eleventh  chapter  of  Hebrews, 
the  sixteenth  verse  :  "They  desire  a  better  country."  A  flood 
of  literature  is  upon  us  concerning  the  discovery  of  America 
by  Christopher  Columbus,  Oct.  12,  1492.  If  you  would  be 
quite  certain  what  the  landfall  was  on  which  he  came  that 
day,  you  should  not  read  more  than  one  book.  Let  it  be  John 
Fiske's  or  Justin  Winsor's  or  Payne's  or  Harrisse's  or  Dr. 
Adams's,  and  you  will  be  quite  sure  it  was  Samana  or  Wat- 
ling's  Island  or  Turk  Island  or  Mariguana,  or  some  other  of 
the  Bahama  group ;  but,  if  you  read  them  all,  and  still  have 
a  definite  opinion,  you  will  be  more  fortunate  than  I  have 
been ;  that  is,  if  you  weigh,  and  do  not  merely  count,  author- 
ities. But  it  does  not  greatly  matter.  It  was  certainly  one 
of  the  Bahamas ;  and,  if  Columbus  had  missed  it  and  gone 
sailing  on  into  the  West,  if  he  hadn't  hit  another  of  the 
many,  he  would  soon  have  come  to  the  main  land,  either 
Florida  or  some  adjacent  coast.  But,  if  he  had  done  this, 
he  would  not  have  known  that  it  was  another  continent :  he 
would  have  thought  it  was  some  headland  of  Eastern  Asia 
or  an  island  off  its  coast.  He  never  saw  the  coast  of  North 
America  at  all,  but  on  his  third  voyage  he  saw  that  of  South 
America  at  the  Odnoco's  mouth,  and  never  dreamed  he  had 
encountered  anything  bigger  than  Cuba  or  Hayti, —  bigger, 
in  fact,  than  all  the  Europe  he  had  left  behind. 

Now  there  are  those  who  always  take  delight  in  belittling 
the   performances  of  great  men.     If  they  could   have  their 


1 6  The   Undiscovered  Country. 

way,  somebody  else  would  have  done  almost  everything, — 
Bacon  should  have  written  Shakspere's  plays,  and  Thomas 
Paine  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  so  on.  And 
these  people  are  made  very  happy  by  the  evidence  which 
convinces  them  that  Columbus  did  not  discover  America. 
How  could  he,  when  he  never  really  touched  the  main  land 
at  all  ? —  when,  even  when  he  came  in  sight  of  it,  he  didn't 
dream  that  it  was  the  main  land  \  and,  when  once  he  did 
find  what  he  thought  was  the  main  land,  he  thought  it  was  a 
part  of  Asia.  He  died,  as  he  had  lived,  without  the  faintest 
possible  suspicion  that  there  was  a  Western  Continent. 
And  it  was  well  for  his  happiness  that  he  did  so ;  for  he 
did  not  desire  a  better  country  than  Marco  Polo  had  de- 
scribed, and  still  less  a  poorer  one,  and  to  his  imagination 
a  Western  Continent  would  have  been  simply  a  barrier  be- 
tween him  and  his  wished  for  goal. 

But,  if  the  glory  of  discovery  must  be  wrested  from  all 
those  who  do  not  at  once  lay  hold  of  the  discovered  thing  in 
its  entirety,  how  would  the  roll  of  the  discoverers  shrivel  in 
this  nipping  air !  For  what  one  of  them,  sail  he  the  Atlantic 
or  Pacific  or  the  Northern  Seas,  or  those  more  mystical  and 
enchanted  seas  which  we  call  Science  and  Criticism  and  In- 
vention and  Philosophy,  has  ever  come  at  once  upon  the 
wholeness  of  the  thing,  the  law,  the  process,  the  system, 
which  rewards  his  patient  search  ?  Columbus  did  discover 
America  in  that  he  discovered  the  outlying  lands  which  are 
as  much  a  part  of  its  great  continental  system  as  the  earth's 
atmosphere  is  of  the  earth,  the  sun's  photosphere  is  of  the 
sun.  And  the  glory  of  his  seeking  and  his  finding  cannot  be 
in  the  least  diminished  by  the  mere  coastwise  prowlings  of 
adventurous  Icelanders  five  centuries  before.  If  he  had 
ever  heard  the  Vinland  stories,  they  could  not  have  sug- 
gested to  him  the  ideas  that  were  central  to  his  own  "  sail- 
ing straight  on  into  chaos  untried."  If  Columbus  did  not 
know  that  he  had  discovered  a  new  continent,  certainly  Leif 
Ericsson  had  no  advantage  over  him  in  this  respect:  the 
former's  loss  is  not  the  latter's  gain.     With  all  honor  for  the 


The  Undiscovered  Country.  17 

hardy  Vikings  of  the  North,  and  to  all  those  into  whose  pas- 
sionate ardor  of  discovery  Columbus  entered  with  an  equal 
mind,  the  fact  remains  he  was 

"  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

And  on  this  four  hundredth  anniversary  of  his  successful 
enterprise  our  cannon  cannot  roar  too  loud,  our  pageants  be 
too  brave,  our  speech  too  eloquent,  our  various  celebration 
too  magnificent,  for  the  proportions  of  his  great  career. 

The  event  we  celebrate  abounds  in  the  most  various  sug- 
gestions for  the  imagination  and  the  heart.  It  is  four  cen- 
turies old ;  and  yet,  in  its  relation  to  the  events  preceding  it 
and  following  it,  it  is  really  wonderful  in  its  confirmation  and 
its  illustration  of  that  evolutionary  science  which  is  the  latest 
born  of  time.     Columbus  was,  as  I  have  said, 

"  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

But,  if  he  hadn't  spoken  quick,  he  would  have  lost  his  chance. 
For  those  were  times  when  the  kingdom  of  discovery  was 
suffering  violence,  and  the  violent  were  taking  it  by  force. 
It  was  a  time  when  the  human  spirit  was  reaching  out  on 
every  side  after  things  new  and  strange.  Find,  if  you  can,  a 
better  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of  that  doing,  daring  time 
than  in  the  account  Othello  gives  the  duke  of  his  whole  course 
of  love.  In  that  account  we  not  only  breathe  the  air  of  Venice, 
thick-spiced  with  Eastern  gums,  but  the  air  that  blew  Colum- 
bus over-seas, —  the  air  of  brave  adventure  that  blew  every- 
where in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  in  the  revival 
of  learning,  in  the  discovery  of  America,  in  the  Copernican 
astronomy,  in  the  sculpture  and  the  painting  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  in  the  Protestant  Reformation,  in  Shakspere's 
lofty  mind.  The  discovery  of  America  by  Columbus  was  the 
most  characteristic  incident  of  this  live  and  stirring  time. 
Looking  somewhat  more  narrowly,  it  was  an  incident  of  that 
search  for  the  Indies  of  which  the  utmost  achievement  be- 
fore the  sailing  of  Columbus  had  been  effected  by  Bartholo- 


1 8  The   Undiscovered  Country. 

mew  Diaz,  who  in  1487  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 
and  sailed  up  the  eastern  coast  of  Africa  some  six  hundred 
miles.  Here  was  a  voyage  back  and  forth  of  thirteen  thou- 
sand miles,  but  it  did  not  complete  the  discovery  of  the  East- 
ern route  to  India.  That  was  left  for  Vasco  da  Gama  ten 
years  further  on. 

To  turn  back  from  the  threshold  of  success  and  seek 
another  way, —  that  is  the  method  of  genius  and  of  the  lof- 
tiest courage.  This  was  the  method  of  Columbus.  That  the 
success  of  Bartholomew  Diaz  might  lack  nothing  of  impres- 
siveness  for  him,  his  own  brother,  Bartholomew  Columbus, 
was  a  sailor  on  the  Diaz  fleet ;  and  it  is  a  capital  proof  of 
Columbus's  possession  by  his  idea  of  a  western  route  that, 
after  his  brother  had  shared  in  what  was  almost  the  discov- 
ery of  the  other,  he  could  so  inoculate  him  with  his  own 
madness  as  to  persuade  him  to  go  posting  off  to  England  to 
see  Henry  VH.,  and  get  him  to  be  the  patron  of  a  Western 
expedition.  But  the  evolution  of  discovery  is  not  more  con- 
firmed and  illustrated  by  the  relation  of  Columbus's  discov- 
ery to  those  discoveries  that  had  preceded  it  than  by  its  rela- 
tion to  those  that  succeeded  and  made  up  the  discovery  of 
America  in  the  broader  sense, —  the  discovery  of  the  Western 
Continent,  and  the  proportions  and  the  relations  of  its  various 
parts.  Until  this  discovery  was  completed  America  was  still 
"  the  undiscovered  country,"  from  whose  bourne  the  travel- 
lers who  returned  told  stories  strangely  mixed  of  various 
yarn,  not  to  say  yarns,  the  true  and  false  together.  But 
before  entering  on  the  history  of  this  process  let  us  notice 
one  or  two  of  the  parables  that  are  hidden  for  us  in  the 
facts. 

Sometimes  the  preacher  can  with  'difficulty  find  one  text 
for  his  sermon.  I  could  find  a  dozen  easily  for  this.  One 
of  them  might  be,  "  Because  of  his  importunity."  He  was 
like  "the  fellow  in  the  parable,"  as  our  friend  Robert  Collyer 
calls  him,  "  who  would  have  three  loaves."  He  would  have 
three  ships  and  provisions  for  twelve  months,  and  would  take 
nothing  less,  and  so  went  from  capital  to  capital,  from  court 


TJie   Undiscovered  Coiuitry.  19 

to  court,  offering  for  these  advantages  a  new  route  to  the 
Indies,  as  he  thought,  but,  in  fact,  a  whole  new  world.  And 
because  of  his  importunity  he  at  last  got  what  he  wanted, 
and  in  this  respect  he  bore  a  very  close  resemblance  to 
almost  all  the  great  discoverers  and  inventors.  They  have 
all  been  heard  at  last  because  of  their  importunity.  Their  cry 
at  midnight  has  been  heard  at  last,  and  they  have  got  their 
three  loaves,  their  three  ships,  their  attraction  of  gravitation, 
their  oxygen,  their  new  planet,  their  spectroscope,  their  con- 
servation of  energy,  their  natural  selection,  and  so  on. 
Theirs  is  what  Robert  Browning  called  "  the  glory  of  going 
on."  "  The  man  who  lays  the  first  shovelful  upon  the 
earth,"  said  Confucius,  "  and  goes  on,  that  man  is  building 
the  mountain." 

Yet,  whatever  may  be  said  for  importunity,  for  the  indomi- 
table will,  for  the  unconquerable  hope,  "  still  clutching  the 
inviolable  shade,"  it  may  not  be  denied  that  there  is  an  ele- 
ment of  accident  and  chance  in  human  life. 

"  Oh,  the  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is, 
And  the  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away ! " 

This  is  the  theme  of  Hawthorne's  "  David  Swan,"  of  Mr. 
Hardy's  "  Tess "  and  his  "Return  of  the  Native";  and 
those  powerful  novels  get  the  utmost  keenness  of  their  tragic 
edge  from  their  dealings  with  this  theme,  and  their  recogni- 
tion of  the  part  the  corresponding  element  plays  in  the  shap- 
ing of  our  lives.  A  few  miles  one  way  or  the  other,  and 
Columbus  might  have  been  the  discoverer  of  North  America. 
A  little  to  the  left  or  right,  and  we  who  make  shipwreck  of 
our  lives  upon  some  barren  island  or  some  lonely  reef  might 
reach  the  fortunate  isles.  But  without  a  longer  life  than  that 
which  he  enjoyed  and  suffered  hardly  could  Columbus  have 
convinced  himself  that  there  was  another  continent. 

"Midmost  the  beating  of  the  steely  sea." 

The  ability  of  a  preconception  to  keep  men  off  from  the 
discovery  of  some  splendid  fact  or  law  was  never  more  curi- 


20  The   Undiscovered  Country. 

ously  exemplified  than  by  the  history  of  opinion  as  to  the 
character  of  the  new-found  lands  of  South,  and  more  espe- 
cially of  North,  America.  Evolution  may  include  a  process 
of  reversion,  and  it  did  so  here.  From  the  old  maps  and 
other  data  it  is  evident  that  there  was,  even  before  Columbus 
died,  and  for  some  years  after,  a  tendency  to  allow  the  exist- 
ence of  a  western  continent.  But  the  original  preconception 
—  that  the  new  land  was  a  part  of  Asia  —  was  too  much  for 
the  more  scholarly  and  scientific  apprehension.  A  reaction 
set  in,  so  resolute  that,  even  when  the  general  outline  of  South 
America  had  been  pretty  well  made  out,  the  parts  of  North 
America  that  had  been  discovered  were  still  joined  on  to 
Asia  by  ligaments  the  most  ingenious  and  absurd.  Even 
when  the  immense  extent  of  North  America  from  north  to 
south  had  been  discovered,  there  was  for  a  long  time  no  ap- 
prehension of  its  corresponding  breadth,  and  the  hope  could 
not  be  given  up  that  it  was  only  a  narrow  barrier  in  the  way 
of  that  real  discovery  which  was  still  the  ultimate  goal.  We 
commonly  imagine  Hendrick  Hudson's  sailing  in  the  "  Half- 
moon  "  up  our  beautiful  river  as  a  most  satisfactory  business 
for  that  stout  sea-sailor.  It  was  a  most  unsatisfactory  busi- 
ness. The  river  would  keep  on  narrowing,  when  he  wanted  it 
to  widen  out  again  and  let  him  through  into  the  Indian  Sea. 
Every  river  mouth  upon  our  eastern  coast  was  entered  and 
explored  with  the  same  hope  of  getting  through  the  barrier. 
The  arctic  explorations  seeking  a  north-west  passage,  in  our 
own  time,  are  but  the  latest  of  a  series  which,  in  its  beginning, 
rested  on  the  inexpugnable  preconception  that  North  Amer- 
ica was  a  part  of  Asia  or  a  narrow  string  of  islands  lying  off 
its  coasts.  Shooting  down  the  La  Chine  rapids  just  above 
Montreal,  the  traveller  does  not  always  know  that  La  Chine 
means  simply  China,  and  that  the  name  commemorates  the 
hope  that  China  had  been  reached  at  last,  or  the  irony  of 
those  who  sought  for  it  that  way  in  vain. 

And  in  all  this  what  a  parable  we  have  of  human  thought 
and  life!  How  often  do  men's  preconceptions  keep  them 
from  the  higher  knowledge  !     Is  not  the  history  of  thought, 


1 


TJie   Undiscovered  Country.  21 

discovery,  and  invention,  in  good  part  the  history  of  such  ob- 
struction and  defeat? — the  sad  rhyme  of  those  who  cling  to 
their  first  fault  and  perish  in  their  pride,  yet  not  always  in 
the  way  of  Browning's  voyagers.  For  they  set  up  their 
"shapes  of  lucid  stone"  upon  the  barren  rocks,  when,  as  it 
proved,  the  isles  they  had   set  out  to  reach  were    close  at 

hand, — 

"  Like  cloudlets  faint  at  evening  sleeping." 

Too  often  we  refuse,  and  seek  to  pass  as  a  mere  barrier,  the 
possibility  which  is  incomparably  better  than  our  dream.  We 
want  some  fresh  nuance  with  the  old  order  or  the  old  creed 
or  the  old  life ;  and  we  will  not  see  that  what  God  has  pre- 
pared for  us  is  a  new  order,  a  new  creed,  a  new  life,  which  is 
infinitely  better  than  the  old, —  so  much  better  that,  if  we 
were  wise,  we  should  burn  our  ships,  as  Cortez  did,  and  push 
on  into  the  heart  of  the  new  country,  and  conquer  it,  and 
make  its  high-built  towns  splendid  treasures  all  our  own. 

Columbus  discovered  America  in  1492.  From  this  teach- 
ing of  our  childhood  we  are  not  going  to  vary, —  not  in  "  the 
estimation  of  a  hair."  This  is  true,  but  something  else  is 
true.  He  was  the  brave  forerunner  of  the  swarm  of  voy- 
agers that  went  sailing  westward  in  the  last  years  of  the 
fifteenth  century  and  the  first  years  of  the  sixteenth  ;  and, 
remembering  the  proverb,  "  It  is  the  first  step  that  costs," 
and  remembering,  too,  how  much  that  step  cost  him  of  faith 
and  patience,  importunity  and  disappointment  and  despair, 
we  shall  not  be  disposed  to  rob  his  laurel  chaplet  of  one  leaf 
for  any  other  brow,  or  to  give  it  leaf  by  leaf  to  all  of  those 
into  whose  labors  he  entered  or  who  entered  into  his. 
Hardly  would  there  be  enough  to  go  round  in  such  a  dis- 
tribution. And  what  need  ?  For  every  one  has  his  own 
wreath,  plucked-at  some  time  by  envious  hands,  but  never 
wholly  spoiled ;  not  even  Vespucci's,  for  whom  —  Amerigo, 
Americus,  America  —  the  continent,  is  named,  by  no  fault  of 
his,  for  he  had  as  little  notion  as  Columbus  that  he  had  dis- 
covered a  new  continent. 

Columbus  discovered  America.     He  did,  and  he  did  not. 


22  TJie  Undiscovered  Country. 

He  did  not  discover  what  he  had  discovered,  the  geographi- 
cal extent  and  the  configuration  of  that  Western  Continent, 
among  whose  adjacent  islands  on  four  hardy  voyages  he 
pushed  the  adventurous  prow  of  his  brave  little  ship,  and 
of  whose  proper  coast  he  got  one  glimpse,  and  knew  not 
what  he  saw.  To  discover  America  in  this  larger  sense  — 
larger  in  terms  of  time  and  space,  but  not  in  terms  of 
spiritual  greatness  —  was,  as  Mr.  Payne  has  shown  indiffer- 
ently well  and  Mr.  Fiske  with  "  sovereign  and  transforming 
grace,"  the  business  of  two  centuries ;  every  step  or  stage  of 
the  long  process  a  canto  in  an  epic  of  great  names  and  lofty 
deeds,  not  without  incidents  of  the  baser  sort,  for  which 
religion,  or  what  men  called  religion  then,  was  most  to  blame. 
But,  surely,  the  discoverers  of  America,  in  discovering  that, 
discovered  something  more,  which  was  no  accident  or  attri- 
bute of  sea  or  land, —  the  wonder  of  their  own  great  hearts, 
their  own  unconquerable  wills,  that  passionate  search  for  the 
unknown,  which  proves  that,  however  it  may  be  in  our  own 
time,  the  agnostic  temper,  which,  not  knowing,  does  not  care 
to  know,  was  farther  from  the  discoverers  of  America  than 
any  goal  they  sought  in  the  wide  sea.  Their  temper  was 
that  man  must  know,  and  can  and  will ;  and  this  temper  ever 

made 

"  Some  coast  alluring,  some  lone  isle, 
To  distant  men,  who  must  go  there  or  die." 

To  trace  the  steps  of  those  two  centuries  of  discovery  and 
exploration,  should  I  attempt  it  now,  might  keep  you  over- 
long.  The  main  reason  why  the  process  was  so  long  was 
that,  even  as  the  Western  Continent  stretched  its  barricade 
between  the  bold  discoverers  and  that  Asiatic  India  they 
sought,  so  the  preconception  of  an  uncontinented  deep,  and 
the  desire  to  reach  the  Indies  by  a  western  route,  stretched 
its  barricade  between  them  and  the  discovery  of  our 
western  world.  The  discoveries  of  Cabot  and  Vespucci 
had  no  dynamic  propagative  energy,  because  they  were  not 
discoveries  of  what  Marco  Polo  had  mapped  out  for  them  to 
seek  and  find.     It  was  inland  exploration  that  did  most  to 


TJie   Undiscovered  Country.  23 

break  the  spell  of   preconceived    opinion.     The    first   great 
names  connected  with  this  new  departure   are  those  of  the 
Spaniards,  Narvaez  and  De  Soto ;  but  those  of  the  French- 
men,  Champlain   and  La  Salle,  shine  with  a  lovelier  light. 
The   lake  that  bears  his  name   is  not  more  beautiful  than 
was  the  character  of  Champlain,  and  the  mountains  do  not 
rise  about  it  with  more  grand  nobility  than  his  fame  arises 
upon  our  minds  as  we  traverse  the  wide  tract  of  discovery 
between  the  sailing  of  Columbus   and  the  return  of   Lieu- 
tenant Peary  only  a  few  weeks  ago  from  his  adventurous  and 
successful  quest.     Columbus  made  his  last  voyage  "  to  that 
undiscovered  country  from    whose    bourne    no    traveller  re- 
turns" in    1506,  and  it  was  not  till    1609    that    Champlain 
penetrated  the  interior  far  enough  to  reach  the  lake  on  which 
he  "  wrote  his  name  in  water  "  in  a  fashion  that  should  have 
cheered  the  heart  of  Keats  when  he  composed  his  epitaph. 
But  only  ten  years  less,  than   two   centuries  from  1492  had 
passed  when  La  Salle's  voyage  down  the  Mississippi  to  its 
mouth  made  sure  that  nothing  short  of  continental  propor- 
tions satisfied  the  claims  of  that  new  world  which  lay  between 
the    Atlantic  and  the    Mississippi,   and    which    that    mighty 
river  drained  upon  its  western  side.     And  not  till   1748   did 
the  Danish  navigator,  Vitus   Bering,   discovering  the  straits 
that  bear  his  name,  sever  the  last  link  that  in  imagination 
bound  the    New  World    to   the   Old.      But   to    Mr.   Fiske's 
two  centuries  for  the  discovery  of  America,  already  exceeded 
by  some  sixty  years,  must  we  not  add  another  century,  seeing 
that  the    Rocky  Mountains   were  not  discovered    till   1743, 
and  not  till  1806  did  Lewis  and  Clark  accomplish  the  first 
transit   of   the  continent,    after   a    journey    of   4,000   miles 
from  the  confluence  of  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia  River.? 

Dr.  Stebbins,  who  will  preach  for  me  next  Sunday  morn- 
ing, will  leave  San  Francisco  this  evening  and  arrive  in  New 
York  next  Friday  evening;  and  any  traveller  can  do  the 
same.  But  the  first  passage  of  the  continent,  reckoning 
from  Champlain  to  Lewis  and  Clark,  took  only  two  years 


24  The   Undiscovered  Country. 

short  of  two  hundred,  from  1608  to  1806.  And  1806  was 
just  three  centuries  from  the  death  of  Christopher  Columbus. 

But,  however  the  dramatic  instinct  may  plead  with  us  to 
say  that  now  at  last  the  discovery  of  America  was  complete, 
the  fact  remains  that,  except  in  its  general  outline  and  ex- 
tent, it  was  still  an  undiscovered  country.  Since  then  a 
thousand  features  of  its  internal  geography  and  topography 
have  been  discovered  by  the  heroic  labors  of  as  many  hardy 
and  adventurous  men,  while  the  sure  hand  of  science  has 
measured  almost  every  river's  length  and  almost  every 
mountain's  height.  And,  so  far,  we  are  only  dealing  with 
the  surfaces  of  things.  What  shall  we  say  of  the  discoverers 
whose  general  direction  has  been  down  into  the  solid  sub- 
stance of  the  continent,  and  of  what  they  have  discovered 
there  of  coal  and  oil  and  iron  and  gold  and  silver  —  a  good 
thing  out  of  politics  —  and  many  other  precious  things  ? 
And  what  shall  we  say  of  all  the  farmer  folk  who,  on  our 
Western  prairies  or  along  our  Eastern  streams,  have  discov- 
ered the  resources  of  the  soil  and  multiplied  its  bounteous 
yield  ?  And  what  of  those  whose  energy  has  set  their  tur- 
bines in  our  waters,  and  developed  all  the  proud,  magnifi- 
cent, and  boastful  splendors  of  our  manufacturing  prosperity? 

Yet,  could  I  tell  aright  the  story  of  all  these,  how  much 
would  still  remain  unsaid !  For  simultaneously  with  the 
discovery  of  our  geographical  and  agricultural  and  industrial 
America  there  has  gone  on  a  process  of  discovery  in  intel- 
lectual and  moral  and  spiritual  things,  in  politics  and  educa- 
tion and  religion, —  a  process  that  is  not  completed  yet, —  so 
that  the  "undiscovered  country"  is  not  yet  a  matter  of  the 
past.  It  is  still  undiscovered,  save  as  a  few  have  seen  it  in 
their  dreams ;  yes,  and  would  be  if  they  had  seen  what  they 
have  dreamed,  for  in  things  spiritual  every  new  height  re- 
veals a  new  horizon,  every  new  advance  a  further  on  before. 
In  things  material,  we  may  reach  the  goal  at  last.  In  things 
spiritual,  no  sooner  does  the  wearied  climber  think  that  he 
has  reached  the  top  and  seen  all  there  is  to  see  than  on  his 
ear  there  sounds  the  chiding  invitation  :  — 


TJie   Undiscovered  Country.  25 

"  Nay,  come  up  hither !     From  this  wave-washed  mound, 
Unto  the  furthest  flood-brim  look  with  me; 
Then  reach  on  with  thy  thought  till  that  be  drowned, 

Miles  and  miles  distant  though  the  last  line  be; 
And  though  thy  soul  sail  leagues  and  leagues  beyond, 
Still,  leagues  beyond  those  leagues,  there  is  more  sea." 

Shall  we  say  that  our  political  America  was  discovered  in 
1776?  That  was  indeed  a  splendid  stroke.  It  gave  us  a 
political  independence  as  complete  as  that  geographical  in- 
dependence which  took  the  physical  discoverers  all  the  way 
from  Christopher  Columbus  to  Vitus  Bering  to  establish. 
But  the  years  from  Columbus  to  Champlain  and  from  Cham- 
plain  to  La  Salle,  and  from  La  Salle  to  Lewis  and  Clark,  were 
not  more  wearisome  than  those  from  1776  to  1787.  Then, 
with  the  establishment  of  our  present  national  Constitution, 
was  the  discovery  of  our  political  America  complete  ?  Nay, 
for  there  loomed  erelong  a  mountain  on  our  view,  the  huge, 
black  bulk  of  slavery,  till  which  had  been  removed  and  cast 
into  the  sea  there  was  no  passage  to  the  land  of  justice, 
peace,  and  true  prosperity  which  lay  beyond.  The  mountain 
was  removed ;  but  at  what  cost  of  long  debate  and  suffering 
and  war !  And  the  Columbus  then  was  Garrison,  and  the 
Champlain  was  Lincoln,  and  the  La  Salle  was  Grant ;  and 
they  had  many  followers  noble  as  themselves,  albeit  of  lesser 
fame.  And,  behold,  our  political  America  is  the  undiscov- 
ered country  still !  Why  not,  when  we  have  learned  so  im- 
perfectly the  problem  of  municipal  government  ?  when  the 
spoils  system  still  drags  down  three-quarters  of  the  heaven 
of  our  civil  service  with  its  monstrous  tail  ?  when,  over  and 
above  the  legitimate  use  of  money  in  elections,  the  illegiti- 
mate use  of  it  by  both  parties  is  still  immense,  disreputable, 
abominable,  and  not  to  be  endured  ?  when,  for  all  the  just 
attempts  on  either  side  to  change  the  average  voter's  mind, 
no  man  of  life-long  probity  and  great  reputation  can  change 
his  own  without  the  base  insinuation  that  he  has  sold  him- 
self for  place  or  salved  some  rankling  wound  .<*  These  are 
but  three  or  four  of  all  the  questions  that  present  themselves 


26  The   Undiscovered  Country. 

the  moment  we  encounter  the  opinion  that  the  discovery  of 
our  political  America  is  already  perfect  and  complete.  It 
never  can  be  so  without  the  toil  and  sacrifices  of  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  the  young  men  and  women  who  are  now 
pressing  forward  into  the  vast  unknown.  It  will  not  be 
when  they  have  done  their  best.  For  political  perfection  is 
an  ever-flying  goal. 

Our  educational  America, —  that,  too,  is  still  an  undiscov- 
ered country  in  good  part,  though  here,  also,  there  have 
been  many  brave  adventurers  and  many  hardy  pioneers. 
Some  things  are  pretty  well  mapped  out  already :  that,  if  we 
are  going  to  have  universal  suffrage,  we  must  have  universal 
education,  and  that  education,  to  be  universal,  must  be  com- 
pulsory ;  that  there  are  some  things  every  boy  and  girl  must 
know ;  that  there  are  others  which  must  be  determined  by 
the  faculty  that  is  in  the  student,  and  not  by  that  which 
sits  in  professorial  chairs ;  that  it  is  not  the  grammar,  but 
the  literature  of  the  classic  world  we  want,  while  the  litera- 
ture of  our  own  English  tongue  is  best  of  all ;  that  the  history 
and  polity  of  America  are  more  necessary  to  American  youth 
than  those  of  Greece  and  Rome  ;  that  we  must  have  moral 
training  as  well  as  intellectual,  and  that  we  can  get  this  from 
no  text-book  or  formal  reading  as  we  can  from  the  great 
examples  of  history  and  literature  and  from  the  personal 
contacts  of  the  school  and  college  and  the  habitual  doing  of 
good,  honest  work.  Until  all  these  things  are  realized  ideals, 
our  complete  educational  discovery  is  still  remote  ;  and,  when 
they  are  realized,  there  will  other  shapes  arise  to  shame  our 
incompleteness  and  to  beckon  us  to  higher  things. 

And  how  undiscovered  our  industrial  America,  when  such 
things  can  be  as  those  which  we  have  seen  of  late,  at  Home- 
stead and  Buffalo,  in  Tennessee  and  Idaho,  when  the  liberty 
of  the  individual  to  employ  those  who  wish  to  be  employed 
and  of  these  to  seek  employment  is  annulled  by  violence, 
when  such  monstrous  inequalities  exist  as  those  we  see  on 
every  side,  when  so  often  the  employer  has  no  sense  that  he 
is  dealing,  not  merely  with  the  abstract  commodity  of  labor, 


The  Undiscovered  Country.  27 

but  with  living,  sometimes,  alas !  with  dying  men  and  women. 
That  better  industrial  country  which  we  seek, —  do  any  of  us 
know  just  where  it  lies  ?  We  know  that  many  a  river-mouth 
which  promises  to  open  up  a  highway  to  its  shores  grows 
narrower  as  we  go  on  ;  and  we  hear  the  warning  of  the 
prophet  sounding  in  our  ears,  "  Elsewhither  for  a  refuge,  or 
die  here !  "  But  equally  we  know  that  there  is  a  better 
country  somewhere  further  on.  It  is  still  undiscovered ;  but 
it  will  loom  some  day  upon  our  eyes,  or,  if  not  upon  ours, — 

"  Others  shall  sing  the  song, 
Others  shall  right  the  wrong, 
Finish  what  we  begin, 
And  all  we  fail  of  win." 

And  the  religious  America, —  that,  too,  is  undiscovered. 
"  For  they  seek  a  better  country,  even  a  heavenly."  There 
is  nothing  very  heavenly  in  our  present  situation, —  a  hundred 
jarring  sects,  a  majority  of  which  imagine  severally  that 
theirs,  and  only  theirs,  is  the  accepted  plan  of  salvation.  I 
find  the  religious  future  of  America,  that  better,  undis- 
covered country  that  we  seek,  prefigured  by  the  harmony 
of  our  United  Stales.  We  would  have  no  separate  State 
abandon  the  traditions  of  its  history ;  but,  cherishing  these 
as  generously  as  may  be,  we  would  have  each  alive  and 
thrilling  with  the  sense  of  a  great  common  history  and  goal. 
So  we  would  have  no  separate  church  abandon  its  tradition  ; 
but  we  hope  and  trust  that  there  will  come  a  time  when  it 
shall  be  gladly  recognized  that  Christianity  is  more  than  any 
sect,  and  religion  more  than  Christianity  or  any  other  sepa- 
rate faith,  and  that  humanity  is  more  than  religion,  and 
sweeps  into  its  wide  embrace  all  earnest  and  inspiring  souls 
and  all  who  need  their  earnestness  and  inspiration.  In  that 
day  shall  be  made  good  the  prophecy  of  Lessing's  Nathan, — 
"What  makes  me  seem  to  you  a  Christian  makes  you  seem 
to  me  a  Jew."  In  that  day  the  barriers  between  the  sects 
shall  offer  no  more  obstruction  to  those  going  back  and  forth 
among  them  than  the  parallels  of  latitude  or  longitude  offer 
to  the  keels  that  bear  the   interchanging  products   of   the 


28  The   Undiscovered  Countiy. 

world  to  their  due  ports,  agreeable  to  the  needs  of  various 
men. 

The  voyage  of  Columbus  has  inspired  full  many  a  splendid 
song,  the  briefest  of  them  all  the  best.  Hear  now  its  sec- 
ond half :  — 

"  Trust  to  the  guiding  God  ;  follow  the  silent  sea. 
Were  shore  not  yet  there,  'twould  now  arise  from  the  wave  ; 
For  nature  is  to  genius  linked  eternally, 
And  ever  will  perform  the  promise  genius  gave." 

But  nature  is  not  linked  to  genius  so  eternally  and  so  irref- 
ragably  as  to  faith  and  hope  and  love.  Obedient  to  their 
promise  and  command,  the  better  country  which  we  seek,  the 
true  America  of  politics  and  education  and  industry  and  re- 
ligion, shall  arise  from  out  the  waste  of  ignorance  and  con- 
flict and  misunderstanding  that  now  swells  and  moans  be- 
tween us  and  our  heart's  desire.  And  in  this  quest  we  are 
discoverers  all.  These  things  will  come  to  pass  only  when 
every  individual  mind  and  heart  and  will  responds  to  the 
divine  commands  which  issue  forth,  new  every  morning  and 
fresh  every  evening,  from  deep  heart  of  God.  Just  in  pro- 
portion as  the  individual  man  and  woman,  youth  and  maid, 
yea,  and  the  little  child,  speaks  the  hard  word  of  truth  and 
leaves  unsaid  the  word  that  ought  not  to  be  spoken,  cleaves  to 
the  right  through  good  and  ill-report,  desires  to  know  and 
follow  what  is  simple  truth,  is  strong  and  brave  to  raise  the 
oppressed  and  fallen  and  to  cleave  the  oppressor  down,  can 
sacrifice  one's  sect  and  dogma  to  religion  and  morality,  and 
one's  selfish  greed  or  narrow  patriotism  to  the  welfare  of 
mankind, — just  in  proportion  as  these  ideals  are  made  real, 
the  America  for  which  all  good  men  should  long  and  work 
and  pray  will  lift  itself  above  the  far  horizon  of  our  hope 
and  dream.     It  is  of  every  day  that  dawns  that  Lowell  sang : 

"  Remember  whose,  and  not  how  short  it  is ! 
It  is  God's  day ;  it  is  Columbus's ! 
A  lavish  day !     One  day  with  life  and  heart 
Is  more  than  time  enough  to  find  a  world." 


1 


I 


I 


f 


SAMUEL  LONGFELLOW. 


If  Mr.  Longfellow  had  never  been  the  minister  of  our  own 
society,  I  could  not  have  refrained  from  speaking  of  his  life 
and  his  example  in  some  special  way,  so  blessed  is  his 
memory  in  all  our  churches,  so  interesting  and  significant 
was  the  part  he  took  in  the  religious  movement  of  our  time. 
He  was  one  of  a  group  of  men  of  whose  sympathies  and 
aspirations  it  has  been  fulfilled  as  it  was  written, 

"  Mark  how  one  string,  sweet  husband  to  the  other, 
Strikes  each  in  each  by  mutual  ordering." 

To  think  of  one  of  them  is  to  think  of  all  of  them, —  Longfel- 
low, Johnson,  Frothingham,  Weiss,  Higginson,  and  Wasson. 
Five  of  the  six  spoke  at  one  meeting  of  the  Free  Religious 
Association  ;  and  such  "  large  utterance  "  no  other  day  in  my 
whole  life  recalls,  nor  such  a  headache  as  I  got  withal.  All 
these  sat  somewhat  loosely  to  the  Unitarian  tradition,  Long- 
fellow less  so  than  the  others,  except  Frothingham,  who 
began  as  a  conservative  and  only  gradually  assumed  the  in- 
dependency of  his  last  years,  while  latterly  his  sympathy  has 
been  almost  perfect  with  our  broadening  Unitarian  ways. 
Johnson  was  an  independent  almost  from  the  start,  and 
Higginson  soon  left  the  ministry,  though  he  has  been  preach- 
ing ever  since,  in  his  own  high,  poetic  way ;  and  Weiss  did 
so  at  last,  while  Wasson  through  his  life  of  pain  and  depriva- 
tion approximated  to  us  more  and  more,  and  we  to  him  in 
generous  rivalry.  For  all  the  likeness  of  these  men,  their 
several  individuality  was  as  distinct  as  possible.  The  most 
unlike  of  all,  both  in  appearance  and  in  the  habits  of  their 
work  and  thought,  were  Longfellow  and    Johnson,  the  two 


30  Samuel  Longfellow. 

whose  mutual  friendship  was  the  most  rare  and  perfect  satis- 
faction of  their  lives.  Longfellow's  was  the  blonde  complex- 
ion, Johnson's  a  swarthy  hue.  Longfellow  was  as  desultory 
in  his  work  as  Johnson  was  strenuous  and  direct,  and  as 
spontaneous  in  his  opinions  as  Johnson  was  resolved  at 
every  step  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  him. 

Mr.  Longfellow  was  born  in  Portland,  Me.,  June  13,  18 19, 
the  same  year  that  gave  us  Lowell  and  George  Eliot ;  and  he 
died,  October  3,  in  the  same  pleasant  city,  which  he  always 
loved  and  with  which  he  always  had  a  bond  of  brotherly 
affection.  Graduated  at  Harvard  College  in  1839,  he  en- 
gaged in  private  teaching  until  1842,  when  he  entered  the 
Divinity  School  at  Cambridge,  from  which  he  graduated  in 
1846,  he  and  Johnson  each  having  taken  a  year  off,  and  so 
graduating  with  the  next  class  to  that  with  which  they  began. 
For  that  graduation  Johnson  wrote  the  noble  hymn  "  God 
of   the    earnest   heart,"   and  Frothingham   his    "unum,    sed 

leonem." 

"  Thou  Lord  of  hosts,  whose  guiding  hand 
Hast  brought  us  here  before  thy  face." 

If  his  own  contribution  to  such  a  songful  time  has  been  pre- 
served, it  must  have  been  "  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word," 
used  for  his  Brooklyn  installation,  but,  I  think,  written  earlier. 
He  entered  almost  immediately  on  the  work  of  his  first  parish 
at  Fall  River,  Mass.,  where  he  remained  until  he  came  to 
Brooklyn,  in  the  spring  of  1853.  The  faintest  echoes  of  his 
preaching  there  are  sweet  with  the  habitual  tenor  of  its  life- 
long way.  Mr.  Bryant  of  our  congregation  recalls  him  there 
in  1848,  upon  the  threshold  of  his  work. 

Our  own  society  was  organized  in  April,  185 1.  In  the  two 
following  years  the  now  venerable  Dr.  Peabody  was  called 
to  be  our  minister,  next  James  Freeman  Clarke,  then 
Horatio  Stebbins, —  just  forty  years  ago, —  and  finally  Starr 
King.  It  cannot  be  said  of  our  society,  as  then  constituted, 
that  it  "  did  not  know  what  it  wanted,  and  wasn't  satisfied 
when  it  got  it."  It  was  perfectly  satisfied  when  it  got  Mr. 
Longfellow.     He  preached  for  the  first  time  April   16,  1853, 


Samuel  Longfellow.  31 

in  the  Brooklyn  Athenaeum,  then  a  brand-new  building, 
and  the  handsomest  in  Brooklyn,  not  a  church.  His  friend 
Johnson  had  sounded  a  trumpet  before  him  as  the  hypocrites 
don^t.  When  some  approved  his  own  preaching  and  others 
heard  it  with  alarm,  he  said,  "  There  is  my  classmate,  Long- 
fellow :  you  must  hear  him  "  ;  and  they  did,  and  printed  his 
first  sermon,  "  The  Word  Preached,"  a  vindication  of  the 
preacher's  office  from  the  standpoint  of  rational  religion. 
"The  pulpit,"  he  said,  "must  not  present  a  theology  which 
contradicts  clear  facts  of  science  or  of  human  nature.  It 
must  not  teach  a  bibliolatry  which  shuts  its  eyes  to  the 
plainest  dictates  of  common  sense  and  puts  itself  in  antago- 
nism to  reason  and  conscience,  to  the  living  word  of  God 
in  the  soul."  Tolerably  familiar  now  that  manner  of  speech, 
but  in  185 1  it  was  extremely  rare.  In  accordance  with  the 
habit  of  the  society,  Mr.  Longfellow  was  not  called  till  after 
some  months'  trial ;  and  this  morning  brings  us  as  nearly  as 
possible,  for  a  Sunday,  to  the  anniversary  of  his  installa- 
tion, Oct.  26,  185 1.  The  Sunday  following  the  new  minister 
took  for  his  subject  "  A  Spiritual  and  Working  Church,"  and 
made  a  noble  exposition  of  his  idea  of  his  own  work  and  that 
of  the  society.  Defining  a  church  as  "  a  society  of  men, 
women,  and  children,  associated  together  by  a  religious  spirit 
for  a  religious  work,"  he  made  it  clear  how  little  faith  he  had 
in  ritual  or  creed  as  an  ecclesiastical  bond,  how  much  in 
fellow-service  and  a  common  love  of  truth.  Accepting  the 
designation  Christian,  he  declared  it  must  mean  religious,  or 
it  was  sectarian  ;  but  to  the  designation  Unitarian  he  objected, 
as  seeming  to  found  the  church  upon  a  theological  doctrine. 
He  sketched  a  comprehensive  plan  of  work,  some  features 
of  which  have  been  preserved  unto  this  day ;  for  example, 
our  system  of  monthly  collections  for  charitable  purposes. 
Another  feature  of  his  plan,  wholly  original,  "the  printing 
and  distributing  of  books  and  tracts,"  was  not  carried  out 
in  his  own  time.  It  was  first  made  practical  by  Mr.  Froth- 
ingham ;  and  we  took  it  up  in  1875,  and  since  then  have 
scattered  at  least  200,000  of  our  sermons  up  and  down  the 


32  Samuel  Longfellow, 

land,  and  many  other  churches  have  engaged  in  a  like  work. 
Mr.  Longfellow's  idea  was  not,  I  think,  to  print  merely  his 
own  sermons.  His  modesty,  if  I  may  say  so  without  an 
injurious  reflection  on  my  own,  would  not  have  permitted 
that.  But,  whereas  Andrew  Jackson  "  took  the  responsi- 
bility," I  do  not. 

Once  fairly  settled  to  his  work,  Mr.  Longfellow's  individu- 
ality gave  form  to  everything  he  touched.  He  had  a  way  of 
his  own,  a  very  tender,  gracious  way  of  doing  everything. 
Never  was  a  man  less  hackneyed  in  his  methods  of  church 
work  and  speech  and  ceremonial.  Did  he  baptize  or  marry 
people  or  speak  beside  the  dead  some  word  of  comfort  to 
the  living  or  administer  the  communion  service,  the  baptism, 
the  marriage,  the  comfort,  the  communion,  was  without  a 
prototpye.  The  baptism  was  a  tender  jubilee  ;  the  marriage 
was  no  ceremony,  but  an  inspiration  ;  the  comfort  was  no 
service,  but  a  psalm  ;  the  communion  was  indeed  that,  as  the 
minister  moved  about  among  the  people,  carrying  the  ele- 
ments in  his  own  hands  and  breathing  tender  phrases  of  the 
Scriptures  and  his  own  unwritten  word.  And  who  should 
say  which  was  the  more  inspired .?  He  was  a  thorough- 
going rationalist  in  his  theology,  allowing  inspiration  to  the 
Bible  in  no  special  sense,  and  insisting  on  the  pure  humanity 
of  Jesus  as  essential  to  his  best  effect  upon  our  lives. 

In  thought  and  aim  he  was  in  perfect  sympathy  with 
Theodore  Parker,  while  differing  widely  from  him  in  his 
methods,  uniting  with  his  religious  affirmation  much  less  of 
theological  negation,  feeling  that  Parker  did  not  sufficiently 
•  revere  the  reverences  of  other  men.  Parker  was  not  so 
much  his  spiritual  father  as  his  elder  brother,  holding  the 
same  relation  to  Johnson  and  Higginson  and  Weiss  and 
Wasson.  With  all  these  he  —  Longfellow  —  had  drunk  deep 
at  transcendental  fountains :  of  Coleridge  and  Carlyle  and 
Emerson.  He  was  a  natural  mystic,  a  high-priest,  or  rather 
poet,  after  the  order  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  and  William 
Law  and  John  Tauler  and  the  Theologia  Germafiica,  but 
with  an  all-pervading  and  controlling  common  sense,  keeping 


Samuel  Longfellow.  35 

his  feet  well  upon  the  ground,  however  with  his  forehead  he 
might  brush  the  stars,  and  able  to  use  the  language  Parker 
attributed  to  Jesus, —  "  words  so  deep  that  a  child  could 
understand  them."  One  can  see  from  the  church  records 
how  his  own  sort  of  people,  men  and  women,  gravitated  to 
him,  how  they  loved  him  and  stood  by  him  with  unalterable 
devotion  while  others  fell  away.  But  for  as  many  as  re- 
ceived him  what  a  power  he  was  of  moral  inspiration  and  of 
spiritual  enlightenment  and  strength  and  joy !  What  peace 
he  brought  into  their  homes,  what  consolation  to  their  sor- 
row, what  conscience  to  their  business  and  politics,  and  "  the 
narrow  things  of  home  " !  Life  as  interpreted  by  him  was 
something  altogether  sweet  and  holy,  tender  and  divine. 
God  was  not  away  off  there  outside  the  universe.  He  was 
its  present  immanent  Life.  He  was  not  away  off  there  in 
Judea  even  :  he  was  right  here  in  our  own  America, —  his 
word  not  exhausted  by  the  Bible,  nor  by  Jesus  and  the 
apostles,  but  very  near  us,  even  in  our  hearts.  There  are 
standards  of  success  tried  by  which  Mr.  Longfellow's  preach- 
ing would  not  be  called  successful.  It  attracted  no  crowds, 
it  built  up  no  great  society.  Tried  by  the  highest  standards, 
it  was  a  success  but  seldom  paralleled  in  the  history  of  our 
Unitarian  churches  or  any  others.  Bulk  does  not  measure 
quality  and  force,  else  were  a  panorama  more  than  Raphael's 
Madonna,  and  the  Pyramids  more  than  the  Parthenon,  and 
Pollok's  "  Course  of  Time  "  more  than  the  "  Lycidas  "  of 
Milton,  or  than    Keats's  "  Nightingale." 

I  find  no  evidence  that  our  society  was  originally  con- 
ceived in  a  more  liberal  spirit  than  the  Unitarian  churches 
round  about.  But  the  evidences  of  such  a  spirit  soon  began 
to  multiply  after  the  settlement  of  Mr.  Longfellow.  Imme- 
diately after,  the  American  Unitarian  Association  having 
smuggled  some  sort  of  creed  or  creedlet  into  its  annual  re- 
port, the  society  adopted  a  series  of  resolutions  declaring 
that  the  fundamental  principle  of  Unitarianism  was  character 
unmeasured  by  belief,  and  that  any  creed  adopted  by  the 
Association  could  only  express  the  creed  of  individuals  vot- 


34  Samuel  Lo7igfellow. 

ing  for  its  adoption.  From  this  time,  moreover,  there  was 
no  distinction  between  "  the  church  "  of  the  New  England 
polity  and  the  congregation,  the  first  article  of  the  amended 
by-laws  reading,  "  The  pastor  and  congregation  constitute 
the  society,  and  no  subscription  or  assent  to  any  formula  of 
faith  shall  be  required  as  a  qualification  for  church  member- 
ship." 

Mr.  Longfellow  had  but  little  strength  to  spare,  and  too 
much  of  it  went  to  the  building  of  this  church,  which  coin- 
cided with  the  financial  crash  of  1857  :  hence,  perhaps,  a 
lower  roof  and  bigger  debt  than  were  intended  at  the  start. 
The  enterprise  was  watched  over  by  Mr.  Longfellow  with 
affectionate  solicitude.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  he  broke  with 
the  tradition  ;  and,  if  not  so  successfully  as  in  his  pulpit  min- 
istrations, it  must  be  remembered  that  neither  his  plans  nor 
the  architect's  were  carried  out.  Whatever  may  be  said  of 
the  building,  the  dedication  sermon  was  entirely  perfect  and 
complete,  wanting  nothing.  I  never  miss  an  opportunity  to 
tell  the  story  of  that  sermon  as  it  came  to  me  in  Bridge- 
water,  Mass.,  where  I  was  then  at  school.  It  was  sent  by 
Mr.  Plimpton  to  the  good  lady  with  whom  I  was  boarding  at 
the  time.  I  remember  well  its  lilac-tinted  covers,  but  better 
still  the  freshness  as  of  lilacs  and  all  spring-like  things 
which  breathed  from  every  line.  Coming  to  me  at  a  time 
when  I  was  singularly  sensitive  to  such  impressions  I  doubt 
not  that  it  had  a  great  determining  influence  on  my  thought 
and  life.  It  braced  me  to  resist  the  great  revival  of  that 
year,  which  was  then  upon  us  like  a  flood,  and  swept  away 
nearly  all  my  schoolmates  into  the  orthodox  church.  No 
better  sermon  has  ever  been  preached  in  this  church,  and  it 
is  just  as  good  to-day  as  it  was  then.  It  was  an  expansion 
and  an  illustration  of  the  glorious  text,  "  One  God  and 
Father  of  all,  who  is  above  all  and  through  all  and  in  you 
all."  The  end  was  very  characteristic  of  the  man.  It  was 
the  last  stanza  of  Holmes's  "  Chambered  Nautilus,"  then 
one  of  the  latest  inspirations  of  the  most  high  God  ;  and  for 
the  line, 


Samuel  Longfellozv  35 

"  Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast." 
he  read, 

"  Lift  thee  to  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast," 

It  was  a  ruinous  change,  no  doubt;  but  Mr.  Longfellow  was 
not  going  to  have  anybody  shut  out  from  heaven.  Better 
spoil  a  hundred  stanzas  than  allow  a  hint  of  that !  Yes,  if 
necessary ;  but  he  was  not  obliged  to  use  the  stanza,  and, 
besides,  his  thought  was  housed  in  it,  as  Holmes  had  written 
it,  as  safely  as  the  nautilus  in  its  shell.  For  all  his  poetry 
and  ideality,  our  dear  friend  had  a  streak  of  literalism  in 
his  composition  which  sometimes  marred  his  mending  of  the 
hymns  he  loved. 

There  was  great  pride  and  comfort  in  the  new  home, — 
"  New  Chapel "  Mr.  Longfellow  always  called  it, —  and 
much  satisfaction  with  the  vesper  service  arranged  by  Mr. 
Longfellow,  the  first  in  use  among  our  churches,  and  more 
simple  and  more  beautiful  than  any  since  arranged.  The 
hymns  written  expressly  for  the  book  were  the  product  of  a 
singularly  happy  inspiration,  especially  "  Now,  on  land  and 
sea  descending,"  and  "  Again,  as  evening's  shadow  falls." 
They  have  all  had  the  widest  currency.  Their  Imes  have 
gone  out  through  all  the  earth  and  their  words  to  the  end  of 
the  world.  But  Mr.  Longfellow  was  depressed  by  failing 
health  and  by  the  cowardice  of  some  who  did  not  like  his 
"preaching  politics,"  and  so  went  off  to  safer  churches,  while 
some  who  stayed  were  full  of  weak  regrets.  June  24,  i860, 
he  preached  his  farewell  sermon  from  Deut.  xv.  i,  "At  the 
end  of  seven  years  thou  shalt  make  a  release."  It  was  a 
noble  exposition  of  his  views  and  feelings  on  the  greatest 
themes, —  God,  Human  Nature,  Jesus,  Immortality,  the 
Bible,  and  the  Nature  of  Religion.  Then  they  were  the 
views  and  feelings  of  a  little  company,  now  of  a  great  and 
ever  greatening  host.  It  had  been  a  ministry  of  wonderful 
refinement,  beauty,  tenderness,  and  spiritual  grace.  You 
will  remember  that  in  defining  the  church,  in  his  first  sermon 
after   his   installation,  he    said    it  was  "  a    society   of   men, 


36  Samitel  Longfellow. 

women,  and  children."  He  did  not  put  the  children  in  his 
definition  and  leave  them  out  of  his  habitual  thought.  Since 
Jesus  took  the  little  children  in  his  arms  and  blessed  them, 
no  one  has  loved  them  more ;  and  some  of  those  he  blessed 
have  never  lost  his  benediction  from  their  hearts.  The  boys, 
especially,  were  drawn  and  held  to  him  by  a  most  gentle 
bond,  which  yet  was  tough  as  steel. 

When,  in  1876,  we  celebrated  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary 
of  our  beginning,  Mr.  O.  B.  Frothingham  was  with  us ;  and 
in  speaking  of  Mr.  Longfellow  and  his  ministry,  he  said :  — 

He  was  a  man  of  men,  one  of  ten  thousand, —  a  man  the  like  of  whom 
for  mfusing  a  pure  and  liberal  spirit  into  a  church  has  never  been  sur- 
passed; full  of  enthusiasm  of  the  quiet,  deep,  interior  kind;  worshipful, 
devout,  reverent ;  a  deep  believer  in  the  human  heart,  in  its  affections ; 
having  a  perfect  faith  in  the  majesty  of  conscience,  a  supreme  trust  in 
God  and  in  the  laws  of  the  world ;  a  man  thoroughly  well  instructed, 
used  to  the  best  people,  used  to  the  best  books  and  the  best  music,  with 
the  soul  of  a  poet  in  him  and  the  heart  of  a  saint ;  a  man  of  a  deeply, 
earnestly  consecrated  will ;  simple  as  a  little  child,  with  the  heart  of  a 
child ;  perpetually  singing  little  ditties  as  he  went  about  in  the  world, 
humming  his  little  heart  songs  as  he  went  about  in  the  street,  wherever 
you  met  him.  .  .  .  He  was  one  of  the  rarest  men, —  in  intellect  free  as  light, 
having  no  fear  in  any  direction,  able  to  read  any  book,  able  to  appreciate 
any  thought,  able  to  draw  alongside  any  opinion;  hating  nobody,  not  even 
with  a  theological,  not  even  with  a  speculative,  not  even  with  a  most  ab- 
stract hatred ;  he  did  not  know  in  his  heart  what  hatred  meant :  he  loved 
God,  his  fellow-men.  .  .  .  He  was  always  in  an  attitude  of  belief,  always 
in  an  attitude  of  hope,  brave  as  a  lion,  but  never  boasting,  never  saying 
what  he  meant  to  do  or  what  he  wished  he  could  do,  but  keeping  his  own 
counsel  and  gonig  a  straight  path,  ploughing  a  very  straight  furrow 
through  a  very  crooked  world.  He  was  as  immovable  as  adamant  and 
as  playful  as  a  sunbeam.  He  wrought  here,  as  the  oldest  of  you  know, 
with  a  singleness  of  purpose  and  a  singleness  of  feeling  that  knew  no 
change  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 

Surely,  the  man  of  whom  such  things  could  be  said  with 
truth  and  soberness  was  one  whom  it  was  good  to  know  as 
pastor  or  as  friend ;  and  when  I  think  of  these  things,  and  of 
how  I  had  his  spirit  to  appeal  to  in  so  many  hearts,  and  that 
of  Staples,  too,  I  wonder  that  my  toilsome  years  have  brought 


Samuel  Longfellow.  37 

to  me  so  little  gain,  and  question  what  the  secret  flaw  can  be 
in  my  own  life  that  has  so  marred  my  work. 

It  was,  I  think,  a  testimony  to  Mr.  Longfellow's  attach- 
ment to  this  society  that  after  leaving  Brooklyn  he  did  not 
assume  another  charge  till  1878,  when  he  went  to  German- 
town,  Pa.,  and  remained  five  years,  making  the  same  beauti- 
ful impression  that  he  made  in  our  own  city.  The  eighteen 
intervening  years,  less  two  or  three  in  Europe,  were  spent 
in  Cambridge,  in  his  brother  Henry's  house.  And  it  was  in 
Cambridge  that  I  saw  him  first,  going  across  the  college 
campus  with  three  little  girls,  "grave  Alice  and  laughing 
Allegra  and  Edith  with  golden  hair,"  motherless  girls  since 
July,  1 86 1,  when  first  their  father  felt  upon  his  breast  that 
"  cross  of  snow,"  which,  like  the  western  mountain,  from 
that  time  he  always  wore.  Samuel  Longfellow  had  an  af- 
fectionate interest  in  the  divinity  students ;  and,  moreover, 
Samuel  Johnson  was  my  friend,  and  sent  him  to  see  me, 
and  even  after  he  had  gone  my  poor  old  room,  where 
Theodore  Parker  had  "  toiled  terribly "  in  his  divinity 
school-days,  seemed  strangely  brightened  up.  After  that  I 
often  saw  him  there,  and  in  the  fine  old  house,  where  I 
could  make  my  boast  that  my  own  great-grandsire  had, 
as  one  of  the  Marblehead  regiment,  been  established  be- 
fore any  of  the  Longfellows ;  and  at  last  there  came  a  day, 
in  May,  1864,  when  I  went  there  to  show  him  a  letter  I  had 
received  from  Mr.  Mills,  asking  me  to  come  to  Brooklyn 
and  preach  for  three  months.  If  I  could  come  with  Samuel 
Longfellow's  blessing  and  God-speed,  I  felt  the  battle  was 
almost  already  won.  He  gave  them  heartily;  and,  when  I 
was  ordained  the  following  December,  he  came  and  gave  me 
the  charge,  and  no  charge  of  infantry  or  cavalry  ever  went 
with  a  more  lively  rush.  It  was  an  astonishment  to  those 
who  had  known  Mr.  Longfellow  as  one  of  the  quietest  of 
speakers,  sometimes  too  quiet  for  the  best  effect.  Perhaps 
no  one  was  more  astonished  than  Mr.  Longfellow  himself. 
The  fact  was  that  in  the  graduation  sermon  to  mv  class  Dr. 
Hedge  had  come  down  pretty  heavily  on  "  Anti-supernatu- 


38  Samtiel  Longfellow. 

ralism  in  the  Pulpit,"  and,  while  Mr.  Longfellow's  temper 
was  not  controversial,  he  could  not  allow  opinions  dear  to 
him  to  be  depreciated  without  rebuke.  Seeing  that  Dr. 
Hedge  had  sent  me  here,  it  was  embarrassing  to  have  him 
punished  at  my  ordination;  but  it  was  evident  that  Mr.  Long- 
fellow had  no  choice.  His  task  was  set  for  him ;  and  how 
was  he  straightened  until  it  was  accomplished !  It  was  De- 
cember 2ist,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  the  ringing  charge 
should  end  with  Lowell's  summons  to  the  endless  way :  — 

"New  occasions  teach  new  duties  ;  Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth  ; 
They  must  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep  abreast  of  Truth ; 
Lo,  before  us  gleam  her  camp-fires  !  we  ourselves  must  Pilgrims  be, 
Launch  our  Mayflower,  and  steer  boldly  through  the  desperate  winter 

sea. 
Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal  with  the  Past's  blood-rusted  key. " 

From  that  time  to  this  there  has  been  no  occasion  of 
special  interest  to  our  society  to  which  Mr.  Longfellow  has 
not  contributed  some  hymn  or  letter  or  address.  At  my  own 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  in  1889  he  spoke  as  if  he  knew 
he  should  not  speak  to  us  again.  He  sang  the  swan-song 
of  his  beautiful  and  earnest  life.  He  expressed  the  essence 
of  his  life-long  aspiration,  hope,  and  dream.  He  pleaded 
for  a  religion  of  humanity,  of  righteousness,  of  piety ;  a  glo- 
rious trinity,  three  and  yet  one.  "  May  this  religion,"  he 
said,  "  continue  to  be  taught  and  enforced  here, —  a  religion 
free,  yet  reverent ;  bold,  yet  not  audacious ;  advancing,  yet 
not  rash ;  earnest,  deep,  sincere,  using  no  words  of  mere  use 
and  custom  ;  consoling,  bracing,  cheering, —  a  religion  at  one 
with  all  knowledge,  all  science,  all  that  is  beautiful,  true,  gen- 
erous, and  helpful  to  man  ;  which,  if  it  gives  new  meanings, 
also  gives  new  emphasis  to  the  great  words  God,  Duty,  Im- 
mortality." There  is  the  mark  of  our  high  calling.  Just  in 
proportion  as  we  attain  to  that  it  will  be  well  with  us. 

"  We  shall  sail  securely,  and  safely  reach 
The  Fortunate  Isles." 

In  1876  we  celebrated  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  our 
first  organization ;  and  at  that  time  Mr.  Longfellow  not  only     9 


Samuel  Longfclloiv.  39 

wrote  us  a  good  letter,  but  a  brave  hymn,  its  theme  the  motto 
of  our  society,  which  he  set  in  golden  letters  on  the  portal  of 
our  house, — "  The  truth  shall  make  vou  free." 

"  We  sowed  a  seed  of  faith  and  hope 

Out  in  the  unfenced  lands  : 
Now,  rooted  deep  and  spreading  fair, 

A  living  tree  it  stands. 
Nor  strife  nor  cry  has  marked  its  growth  ; 

But,  broadening  silently, 
Each  bough  that  swa3-s  in  sunshine  says, 

'  The  Truth  shall  make  you  free.' 

"Its  leaves  have  for  our  healing  been 

By  dews  of  heaven  blest; 
Beneath  its  boughs  our  children  sang. 

Our  dear  ones  passed  to  rest. 
We  in  the  shade  of  God  have  walked. 

Whom  our  own  hearts  could  see ; 
And,  lo !  from  need  of  rite  and  creed 

His  Truth  had  made  us  free. 

"  From  outward  rule  to  inward  law 

That  Truth  our  feet  still  lead; 
From  letter  into  spirit  still, 

From  form  to  life  and  deed! 
From  God  afar  to  God  most  near ! 

Our  confidence  is  He; 
From  fear  of  man  or  church's  ban 

His  Truth  has  made  us  free." 

And  now  let  us,  to  the  music  of  this  noble  hymn,  pass  to 
the  consideration  of  a  phase  of  Mr.  Longfellow's  activity  to 
which,  so  far,  I  have  made  only  incidental  reference, —  to  the 
hymns  he  wrote  and  the  collections  of  hymns  he  made  alone 
or  with  another's  help.  He  wrote  the  life  of  his  brother 
Henry  and  that  of  his  friend  Samuel  Johnson,  both  with 
perfect  sympathy  and  delicate  reserve ;  and  he  contributed 
many  articles  of  sterling  worth  to  the  Index  and  the  Radical^ 
though,  because  of  some  physical  or  intellectual  inertia,  he 
always  had  to  goad  himself  to  do  such  things.  But  his  best 
literary  work  was  that  of  a  hymn-writer,  editor,  and  com- 
piler.    Too    often    dubbed   "  the    brother   of   the    poet,"   an 


40  Savniel  Longfellow. 

appreciative  wit  once  spoke  of  Henry  in  the  same  terms. 
And  well  he  might,  for  in  temperament  and  in  his  sympathy 
and  appreciation  Samuel  was  not  the  less  poetic  of  the  two. 
But,  while  in  Henry  the  creative  impulse  was  vigorous  and 
unfailing,  in  Samuel  it  was  irregular  and  weak.  "  Few 
verses  of  many  years  "  is  the  apt  title  of  a  collection  of  his 
pieces  that  he  made  in  1887,  and  modestly  distributed  among 
his  friends,  without  publishing  it  abroad.  There  are  only 
forty-eight,  and  the  most  of  them  are  hymns ;  but  what  they 
lack  in  number  they  make  up  in  quality.  Of  his  vesper 
hymns  I  have  already  spoken.  The  first  hymn  he  has  pre- 
served was  written  in  1846,  when  he  was  in  the  Divinity 
School,  for  the  ordination  of  Edward  Everett  Hale.  It  is 
astonishing  how  many  of  the  hymns  that  are  most  precious 
in  our  churches  were  written  by  the  students  in  that  dear  old 
hall, —  Sears's  "  Calm  on  the  listening  ear  of  night "  and 
Johnson's  "  Father,  in  thy  mysterious  presence  kneeling," 
and  "  Lord,  once  our  faith  in  man  no  fear  could  move,"  and 
many  another  hardly  less  than  these.  Several  of  Mr.  Long- 
fellow's hymns  besides  those  for  the  vesper  service  were 
written  here  in  Brooklyn,  one  of  them, 

"  Out  of  the  dark  the  circling  sphere 
Is  rounding  onward  to  the  light." 

At  Nice,  in  i860,  when  he  and  Johnson  were  compiling 
"Hymns  of  the  Spirit,"  they  were  both  filled  with  the  spirit; 
and  Johnson  wrote  the  glorious  hymn 

"  City  of  God,  how  broad  and  far 
Outstretch  thy  walls  sublime  !  " 

and  the  more  glorious 

"Life  of  ages,  richly  poured, 
Love  of  God  unspent  and  free  " ; 

while  Longfellow  wrote,    "Light  of  Ages  and  of    Nations" 

and 

"  One  holy  Church  of  God  appears 

Through  every  age  and  race." 
The  first  fruit  of  his  activity  as  an  editor  and  compiler  was 


Sainitel  Longfellow.  41 

the  "  Book  of  Hymns  "  which  he  compiled  in  the  Divinity- 
School  in  co-operation  with  Samuel  Johnson.  Theodore 
Parker  always  called  it  the  "Sam  Book"  or  the  "Book  of 
Sams."  It  was  published  in  1848,  and  marked  a  great  ad- 
vance both  in  poetical  and  spiritual  quality  on  the  preceding 
compilations.  It  first  introduced  to  this  country,  but  as 
anonymous,  though  it  had  been  written  in  1833,  Newman's 

"Lead,  kindly  Light,  amid  the  encircling  gloom, 

but  with  a  change  in  the  third  stanza  that  should  never  have 
been  made.  It  was  only  one  of  many  made  by  Mr.  Long- 
fellow from  first  to  last,  and  some  of  them  have  given  much 
offence,  and  rightly,  too  ;  but  take  them  altogether,  and  the 
good  he  did  outweighs  the  evil  and  mistake  a  hundred  times. 
Few  persons  are  aware  how  much  he  did  to  make  for 
Whittier  the  reputation  of  a  hymn-writer  in  the  churches  sec- 
ond to  no  other.  For  you  will  notice,  as  I  said  here  a  few 
weeks  ago,  that  Whittier  wrote  few  hymns  as  such.  He 
wrote  too  easily  to  stop  at  the  fourth  or  fifth  stanza.  The 
hymns  we  sing  as  his  have  for  the  most  part  been  taken  here 
a  little  and  there  a  little  from  much  longer  pieces,  and 
sometimes  particular  stanzas  have  been  much  altered.  The 
hymn  called  "Christianity"  in  "Hymns  of  the  Spirit"  is 
taken  from  a  poem  on  Democracy ;  and  the  first  stanza  is 
almost  entirely  Mr.  Longfellow's, — 

"  O  fairest  born  of  Love  and  Light, 
Yet  bending  brow  and  eye  severe 
On  all  which  pains  the  holy  sight 

Or  wounds  the  pure  and  perfect  ear." 

Incomparable  the  service  done  to  Whittier  and  to  us  all  by 
these  changes,  daring  as  many  of  them  are !  Incomparable 
the  service  done  by  Mr.  Longfellow's  alterations  generally, 
whatever  there  may  be  for  our  regret !  But  concerning  this 
whole  matter  Mr.  Longfellow  wrote  to  me  only  a  few  months 
ago ;  the  last  letter,  except  one,  he  wrote  to  me,  in  that  beau- 
tiful handwriting  which  reflected  the  graces  of  his  mind  and 
heart.     He  said  :  "  It  is  the  principle  of  adaptatioti  to  a  special 


42  Samuel  Longfellow. 

use  which  is  the  only  justification  of  changes  in  hymns  that  I 
can  offer.  It  is  a  question  of  using  or  not  using  which  makes 
it  needful  to  change  (i)  some  verses  originally  written  not 
as  hymns,  yet  which  one  wants  to  use  as  such,  (2)  some  hymns 
written  by  persons  of  different  beliefs  from  those  who  are  to 
use  the  hymn-book,  phrases  in  which  could  not  be  conscien- 
tiously said  or  sung  by  the  latter,  yet  which  from  their  general 
values  of  strength,  fervor,  or  tenderness  could  ill  be  spared. 
Among  such  are  the  hymns  addressed  to  '  Christ.'  The 
many  changes  of  this  kind  [addressing  them  to  God]  are  the 
more  defensible  because  the  authors  believed  Jesus  to  be 
God.  ...  If  I  had  been  making  a  collection  of  hymns  or  re- 
ligious poetry  for  private  reading,  I  should  not  have  altered 
a  single  word." 

In  1864  Mr.  Longfellow  and  Mr.  Johnson  published  a  new 
hymnal,  "  Hymns  of  the  Spirit,"  which  was  a  much  richer 
treasury  of  spiritual  things  than  its  forerunner;  while  its 
entire  omission  of  the  supernatural  element,  of  which  the 
"  Book  of  Hymns  "  had  much,  was  a  bar  to  its  adoption  in  any 
churches  but  the  most  frankly  radical.  Moreover,  there  was 
in  it  much  less  specifically  Christian  matter ;  and  the  hymns 
touching  the  life  and  character  of  Jesus  were  but  few,  though 
of  the  best.  In  these  things  Mr.  Johnson's  hand  was  much 
more  evident  than  Mr.  Longfellow's,  who,  nevertheless,  was 
grieved  because  the  new  book  was  not  adopted  here.  The 
book  fell  into  the  ground  and  died,  but  it  has  borne  much 
fruit.  It  has  been  a  quarry  from  wliich  the  loveliest  courses 
of  many  subsequent  hymnals  have  been  hewn.  Then,  too,  it 
showed  the  poverty  of  the  current  hymns  concerning  Jesus, 
and  our  radical  hymnists  have  done  something  to  make  good 
the  lack.  In  i860  Mr.  Longfellow  published  a  book  of 
"  Hymns  and  Tunes,"  which  was  widely  used,,  and  by  us  here 
until  we  replaced  it  by  a  new  edition  that  appeared  in  1876, 
which  differed  from  the  first  much  as  the  "  Hymns  of  the 
Spirit "  differed  from  the  "  Book  of  Hymns."  The  four 
books  have  had  an  incalculable  influence  upon  the  hym- 
nology  and  worship  of  this  country  and  Great  Britain.     They 


Samuel  Longfellow.  43 

have  not  only  entered  largely  into  all  the  Unitarian  hymn- 
books,  but  into  those  of  other  sects,  an  English  Episcopalian 
and  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  drawing  on  them  for  scores  of 
hymns. 

In  "  The  Wayside  Inn  "  there  is  a  description  of  "  a  theo- 
logian from  the  school  of  Cambridge  on  the  Charles,"  which, 
we  are  assured,  was  not  intended  by  Henry  for  a  portrait  of 
his  brother  Samuel ;  but  a  better  likeness  of  him  could  not 
be:  — 

"  He  preached  to  all  men  everywhere 
The  gospel  of  the  Golden  Rule, 
The  new  commandment  given  to  men, 
Thinking  the  deed,  and  not  the  creed, 
Would  help  us  in  our  utmost  need. 
With  reverent  feet  the  earth  he  trod, 
Nor  banished  Nature  from  his  plan. 
But  studied  still  with  deep  research 
To  build  the  Universal  Church, 
Lofty  as  is  the  love  of  God 
And  ample  as  the  wants  of  man." 

The  open  secret  of  his  influence  was  a  beautiful  sincerity. 
What  the  man  could  say  he  said  :  the  priest  added  nothing 
because  it  was  traditional  or  expected.  On  his  seventieth 
birthday  he  said,  "I  shall  ask  no  one  to-day  who  does  not 
call  me  '  Sam.'  "  If  all  who  called  him  so  had  come,  the  old 
house  would  have  been  as  full  as  when  Glover's  regiment 
was  quartered  there.  But  it  was  in  speaking  ^him,  and  not 
to  him,  that  the  monosyllable  was  used,  except  by  the  most 
privileged  few.  It  meant  that  he  was  infinitely  liked  and 
trusted  and  admired  and  loved.  He  was  the  most  compan- 
ionable of  men,  full  of  "  wise  saws  and  modern  instances," 
always  ready  with  a  pun  or  an  impromptu  rhyme,  full  of 
sweet  laughter,  much  travelled,  and  threading  his  conversa- 
tion with  delightful  reminiscences  of  the  places  he  had  seen, 
going  about  doing  good  in  quiet,  pleasant  ways,  laying  the 
humblest  duties  on  himself  at  all  times  with  a  cheerful  heart. 
He  was  a  living  illustration  of  the  truth  that  religion  without 
dogma  is  no  idle  dream.     He  could  not  affirm  the  personal- 


44  Saimiel  Longfellow. 

ity  of  God ;  but  I  have  never  known  a  man,  nor  read  of  one 
in  books,  including  the  New  Testament,  to  whom  God  was  a 
more  Real  Presence  in  his  daily  walk  and  conversation,  in 
his  sermons  and  his  prayers,  in  the  country,  in  the  town,  in 
all  he  thought  and  did.  We  hesitate  to  affirm  the  moral  per- 
fection of  Jesus ;  and  well  we  may,  knowing  so  little  of  his  out- 
ward and  his  inward  life.  But  we  do  not  question  the  ability 
of  some  men  to  do  each  time  exactly  what  they  think  is  right. 
We  believe  that  there  are  men  who  do  this,  and  that  Samuel 
Longfellow  was  one  of  these. 

Our  poets  have  been  fortunate  in  writing  songs  appropri- 
ate to  the  end  of  life.  Browning  did  it,  and  Emerson  and 
Whittier,  and  Tennyson,  who  has  just  crossed  the  bar.  And 
Mr.  Longfellow  is  not  a  whit  behind.  His  "Golden  Sun- 
set "  was  written  for  his  friend  and  mine,  Charles  Parsons,  a 
lover  of  this  place.  It  was  suggested  by  a  picture  Mr.  Par- 
sons painted  and  gave  to  him,  if  my  memory  has  not  begun 
to  fail.  The  poem  is  a  prayer,  and  it  was  sweetly  answered 
for  our  friend.     God  grant  that  it  may  be  for  us  ! 

"The  golden  sea  its  mirror  spreads 
Beneath  the  golden  skies, 
And  but  a  narrow  strip  between 
Of  earth  and  shadow  lies. 

"  The  cloud-like  cliffs,  the  cliff -like  clouds, 
Dissolved  in  glory  float. 
And  midway  of  the  radiant  floods 
Hangs  silently  the  boat. 

"The  sea  is  but  another  sky, 
The  sky  a  sea  as  well, 
And  which  is  earth  and  which  the  heavens 
The  eye  can  scarcely  tell. 

"  So,  when  for  me  life's  evening  hour 
Soft  passes  to  its  end, 
May  glory  born  of  earth  and  heaven 
The  earth  and  heaven  blend; 

"Flooded  with  light  the  spirit  float. 
With  silent  rapture  glow, 
Till  where  earth  ends  and  heaven  begins 
The  soul  may  scarcely  know." 


Samuel  Longfellow.  45 


The  foregoing  sermon  was  preached  on  Sunday  morning, 
October  23,  in  response  to  the  request  embodied  in  the  fol- 
lowing Resolutions  :  — 

The  Trustees  of  the  Second  Unitarian  Society  of 
Brooklyn,  having  heard  of  the  death  of  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Longfellow  in  Portland,  Me.,  on  the  3d  inst.,  would  hereby 
call  10  mind  that  from  1853  to  i860  he  was  the  beloved 
minister  of  this  society,  and  that  his  ministry  was  character- 
ized by  an  openness  of  mind,  a  freedom  from  conventional- 
ity, a  moral  earnestness  and  spiritual  fervor,  which  have  been 
to  us  ever  since  "the  mark  of  our  high  calling."  They  are 
happy  to  believe  that  in  the  course  of  thirty  years'  residence 
in  other  places  he  never  lost  his  interest  in  this  society,  and 
that  those  who  knew  him  here  were  always  grateful  for  the 
influence  of  his  word  and  life.  Especially  would  we  be  glad 
that  his  beautiful  hymns  have  brought  him  frequently  to 
mind,  and  breathed  on  us  his  spirit  of  good  will  to  men  and 
trust  in  God. 

Resolved,  That  our  minister  be  requested  to  make  Mr. 
Longfellow's  life  and  character  the  subject  of  a  memorial 
discourse  at  his  earliest  convenience;  also  that  a  copy  of 
these  Resolutions  be  transmitted  to  Mr.  Longfellow's  relatives 
and  inscribed  upon  the  records  of  the  society. 

Brooklyn,  Oct.  4,  1892. 

The  services  connected  with  the  sermon  were  associated 
with  Mr.  Longfellow  as  much  as  possible.  The  introductory 
sentences  were  of  his  selection,  the  Scripture  reading  was 
from  the  Apocrypha,  which  Mr.  Longfellow  was  one  of  the 
first  to  love  and  read  among  us,  when  to  read  it  occasioned 
the  remark,  "  The  Bible  is  not  good  enough  for  ///w,"  and 
the  three  hymns  were  hymns  that  he  had  written,  and  were 
as  follows  :  — 

I. 

O  Life  that  maketh  all  things  new , — 

The  blooming  earth,  the  thoughts  of  men  ! 

Our  pilgrim  feet,  wet  with  thy  dew, 
In  gladness  hither  turn  again. 

From  hand  to  hand  the  greeting  flows, 
From  eye  to  eye  the  signals  run, 


4^  Samuel  Lcmgfellozv. 

From  heart  to  heart  the  bright  hope  glows 
The  seekers  of  the  Light  are  one, — 

One  in  the  freedom  of  the  Truth, 
One  in  the  joy  of  paths  untrod, 

One  in  the  soul's  perennial  youth. 
One  in  the  larger  thought  of  God,— 

The  freer  step,  the  fuller  breath, 
The  wide  horizon's  grander  view, 

The  sense  of  life  that  knows  no  death, — 
The  Life  that  maketh  all  things  new. 

IL 

One  holy  Church  of  God  appears 
Through  every  age  and  race, 

Unwasted  by  the  lapse  of  years. 
Unchanged  by  changing  place. 

From  oldest  time,  on  farthest  shores, 

Beneath  the  pine  or  palm. 
One  Unseen  Presence  she  adores, 

With  silence  or  with  psalm. 

Her  priests  are  all  God's  faithful  sons, 
To  serve  the  world  raised  up ; 

The  pure  in  heart  her  baptized  ones ; 
Love,  her  communion-cup. 

The  truth  is  her  prophetic  gift. 

The  soul  her  sacred  page  ; 
And  feet  on  mercy's  errands  swift 

Do  make  her  pilgrimage. 

O  living  Church  !  thine  errand  speed  ; 

Fulfil  thy  task  sublime; 
With  bread  of  life  earth's  hunger  feed  ; 

Redeem  the  evil  time  ! 

in. 

Now  while  we  sing  our  parting  psalm, 
With  reverent  lips  and  glowing  heart, 

May  peace  from  out  the  eternal  calm 
Rest  on  our  spirits  as  we  part ! 

May  light,  to  guide  us  every  hour. 
From  thee,  eternal  Sun,  descend  ; 

And  strength  from  thee.  Almighty  Power, 
Be  with  us  now,  and  to  the  end! 


THE  OLD,  OLD  STORY. 


It  is  an  older  story  than  the  theologians  tell  concerning 
Jesus  that  I  wish  to  tell  you  this  Christmas  morning.  And 
yet,  perhaps,  this  morning  is  not  the  best  I  could  choose  for 
such  a  story;  for  the  very  name  "  Christmas  "  suggests  the  be- 
ginning of  that  legend  which  went  on  growing,  century  after 
century,  until  the  theological  conception  of  Jesus  was  as  unlike 
the  actual  man  who  trod  the  earth  of  Galilee,  and  went 
teaching  through  her  populous  towns,  as  Pollok's  "  Course  of 
Time  "  is  unlike  the  simple  songs  that  came  straight  from  the 
heart  of  Robert  Burns.  If  you  know  of  any  two  things  more 
unlike,  then  you  can  make  a  contrast  of  your  own,  and  it  will 
be  a  better  one  than  mine  ;  for,  the  more  unlike  the  things 
that  you  contrast,  the  better  will  they  image  forth  the  differ- 
ence between  the  actual  Jesus  and  the  mythological  Christ, 
—  the  theological  being,  superhuman,  superangelic,  God, 
who  in  about  three  centuries  was  substituted  for  Jesus  in  the 
creed  of  Christendom  and  the  affections  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

And  yet,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  while  we  know  very 
little,  almost  nothing,  about  the  birth  of  Jesus,  we  know  a 
great  deal  about  the  birth  and  infancy,  the  ideal  creation,  of 
the  theological  being  who  usurped  his  place.  I  have  often 
told  you  of  the  mediaeval  play  in  which  Adam  is  represented 
going  across  the  stage,  going  to  be  created.  Now,  Christ  has 
frequently  been  called  the  second  Adam,  and  it  is  very  certain 
that  the  New  Testament  Christ  seconds  the  medicEval  Adam 
in  that  we  find  him  going  across  the  New  Testament  stage, 
going  to  be  created ;  and  not  only  so,  but  we  find  him  in 
successive  stages  of  creation,  from  the  pure  and  then  adorned 


48  The  Old,  Old  Story. 

humanity  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  up  through  the  free  and 
daring  speculations  of  the  apostle  Paul,  wherein  he  is  a 
heavenly  archetypal  man,  and  next  a  cosmic  principle,  until 
at  length  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  he  is  so  near  the  verge  of  god- 
head that,  one  step  more  being  taken,  he  was  well  across  the 
line.  It  is  the  first  step  which  costs,  the  proverb  says ;  but 
this  step,  which  was  not  the  first  nor  the  second,  cost  a  great 
deal, —  well-nigh  two  centuries  of  time,  for  the  Fourth  Gospel 
was  written  soon  after  125  a.d.,  and  the  deification  of  the 
theologic  Christ  was  consummated  at  the  Council  of  Nicaea 
in  325  ;  and  a  quite  infinite  amount  of  difference  and  debate 
and  disputation,  with  much  heart-burning,  too,  and  many 
evil  passions  stirred  up  on  the  way.  Every  inch  of  that  step 
has  been  preserved  to  us  in  the  records  of  the  early  Christian 
Church,  even  in  those  tattered  leaves  and  fragments  of  them 
which  have  come  down  to  us.  And  we  have  no  anger  nor 
contempt  for  those  who  did  the  most  to  bring  the  change  to 
pass.  Here  and  there,  no  doubt,  there  were  self-seeking  and 
double-dealing  and  such  things,  from  which  no  church  has 
ever  been  entirely  free.  But,  for  the  most  part,  the  theo- 
logians of  the  second  and  third  centuries  who  transformed 
the  human  Jesus  into  a  mythological  Christ,  and  that  mytho- 
logical Christ  into  the  infinite  and  eternal  God,  were  ear- 
nest, honest  men.  They  did  the  best  they  could  under  the 
circumstances  of  the  time.  Each  hair's-breadth  of  the  way 
was  a  necessity  of  the  limitations  of  their  thought,  and  the 
demand  for  definite  opinion  as  a  basis  of  church  organiza- 
tion. And  who  shall  say  that  there  was  not  good  as  well  as 
ill  in  the  great  transformation  ?  Who  shall  say  that  the 
simplicity  of  Jesus  would  have  survived  the  strange  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  first  Christian  centuries,  that  any  word  of  Gospel 
or  Epistle  would  have  come  down  to  us,  any  image  of  Jesus 
in  the  human  semblance  of  his  life,  if  all  these  had  not  been 
wrapped  about  in  various  integuments  congenial  to  the  taste 
and  fancy  of  the  Oriental  and  the  Roman  mind  ? 

For,    in    truth,  "the    vast   and    splendid  disfigurement  of 
ecclesiastical    tradition,"  as   Mr.  Curtis  once  called  it  in  a 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  49 

phrase  which  was  at  once  a  compliment  and  condemnation, 
was  less  a  distortion  of  the  actual  than  a  concealing  of  it 
from  our  view  ;  and,  what  the  early  theologians  did,  the  later 
theologians,  the  later  scholars  and  critics,  have  undone  to 
a  very  great  extent.  They  have  rolled  away  the  stone 
which  the  old  theologians  had  set  against  the  tomb,  the 
prison,  of  the  actual  Jesus.  They  have  said  to  him,  "  Come 
forth  1  "  and  he  has  rent  the  cerements  of  dogmatic  repre- 
sentation, scattered  the  spices  of  an  insane  and  sickly  adu- 
lation, and  come  forth  to  walk  once  more  among  us  as  a 
brother  man,  with  human  limitations  and  defects,  but  none 
the  less  with  a  great  human  heart  which  dared  to  trust  that 
God's  could  be  no  less,  and  with  a  passionate  enthusiasm 
for  all  men  and  women  bowed  and  crushed  under  the  weight 
of  any  sorrow,  misery,  or  sin.  For  all  those  to  whom  the 
course  of  modern  studies  of  the  New  Testament  is  some- 
thing strange  and  far  away,  immersed  as  they  are  in  many 
cares  and  troubles  and  anxieties,  with  no  time  for  study, 
with  no  time  for  thought,  it  is  nothing  wonderful  that  there 
is  no  appreciation  of  the  force  and  meaning  of  these  studies. 
But  that  any  one  who  has  time  for  study  and  for  thought, 
and  who  has  followed  the  course  of  these  studies,  even  in 
the  most  casual  way,  can  help  acknowledging  that  the  theo- 
logical Christ,  the  second  person  in  the  Trinity,  is  an  ideal 
creation  of  Greek  metaphysics  and  corresponds  to  nothing 
actual  in  heaven  or  on  earth,  is  almost  as  miraculous  as 
any  story  that  the  New  Testament  legend  has  preserved. 
"  Washington  was  born  with  his  clothes  on ! "  said  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  protesting  against  Greenough's  statue  of  Wash- 
ington, in  which  an  army-blanket  is  the  only  drawback  from 
the  unqualified  simplicity  of  the  natural  man.  But  suppos- 
ing any  one  who  had  known  the  Father  of  his  Country  from 
his  infancy,  and  had  watched  his  growth  from  stage  to  stage, 
and  knew  the  very  tailors  who  had  made  his  clothes,  should 
insist  upon  believing  that  he  was  born  just  as  he  was  in  his 
maturity,  apparelled  as  he  was  at  Germantown  or  Monmouth 
or  on  April  30,  1789,  when  he  took  the  oath  as  President  of 


50  The  Old,   Old  Story. 

the  United  States,  over  yonder  in  Wall  Street, —  such  insist- 
ence would  not,  I  think,  be  a  whit  more  irrational  than  it  is 
for  any  one  who  has  studied  the  New  Testament  and  early 
Christianity,  as  they  can  be  studied  in  our  time,  to  insist  that 
the  fourth-century  Christ,  the  God-man,  the  infinite  God,  is 
no  ideal  development,  clothed  upon  with  the  conceptions  of 
Greek  metaphysics,  but  the  original  Jesus  of  Nazareth ;  see- 
ing that  we  know  every  step  by  which  the  simplicity  of  Jesus 
was  overlaid  and  overborne  by  the  vast  and  splendid  disfig- 
urement of  ecclesiastical  tradition.  That  my  comparison  is 
a  homely  one  I  am  well  aware ;  but,  the  homelier,  the  better, 
if  so  only  I  can  make  it  plain  how  utterly  preposterous  ap- 
pears to  me  the  dogma  of  the  deified  Christ  in  the  face  of 
what  we  know  the  course  of  deification  to  have  been. 

Endeavoring  to  pass  beyond  all  this  and  to  come  face  to 
face  with  Jesus  as  he  actually  was  in  his  short  life,  the  facts 
appear  to  shape  themselves  into  a  story  after  this  fashion  : 
Jesus  was  born  in  Nazareth,  a  little  town  of  Southern  Gali- 
lee, about  1895  years  ago, —  three  or  four  years  before  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  which  avowedly,  but  not 
really,  is  reckoned  from  his  birth.  He  was  one  of  many  chil- 
dren of  Joseph  and  Mary,  peasant  folk  living  in  Nazareth. 
He  was  Mary's  first-born  child  ;  but  quite  possibly  Joseph 
had  children  by  a  former  wife,  who  shared  with  the  new 
swarm  the  narrow  home.  The  brothers  of  Jesus  had  not 
much  faith  in  him  during  his  lifetime,  yet  claimed  a  certain 
royalty  on  him  after  his  death.  The  father  was  a  carpenter ; 
and  the  young  Jesus  learned  his  trade,  and  followed  it  for 
many  years.  As  for  his  education,  it  was  mainly  such  as  the 
hazza?i,  or  village  teacher,  could  give  him  in  the  synagogue, — 
a  learning  of  Old  Testament  texts  deaconed  out  to  the  chil- 
dren as  they  sat,  cross-legged,  on  the  floor.  As  for  his  sports 
and  pastimes,  we  know  that  he  played  at  weddings  and 
funerals  in  the  market-place ;  and  that  he  made  mud  spar- 
rows, if  he  could  not  make  them  fly  according  to  the  fable, 
is  easily  within  the  bounds  of  probability.  The  time  on 
which  his  boyhood  fell  was  eager  and  intense.     The  coming 


The  Old,   Old  Stoiy.  51 

of  the  ]\Iessiah  was  the  universal  theme  of  conversation. 
The  heart  of  Palestine  was  shaken  with  a  vague  unrest. 
Suddenly  there  was  heard  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the 
wilderness  of  Judea,  "  Repent,  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
at  hand ! "  The  impassioned  herald  was  John  the  Baptist, 
in  whom  the  ancient  prophetism,  which  had  seemed  to  perish 
centuries  before,  attained  a  second  birth.  A  harsh  ascetic, 
rudely  clad,  his  food  locusts  and  wild  honey, —  a  delicacy 
approved  by  certain  modern  travellers, —  he  proclaimed  the 
speedy  coming  of  the  Messiah's  kingdom,  and  endeavored 
to  prepare  the  people  by  the  amendment  of  their  lives  for 
the  enjoyment  of  its  felicity.  The  rumor  of  his  preaching 
reached  to  Nazareth ;  and  Jesus  left  his  carpentering  and 
became  a  follower  of  John,  receiving  baptism  at  his  hands. 

Whether,  if  John  had  lived  and  kept  up  his  activity,  Jesus 
would  have  remained  contented  wi.th  the  position  of  disciple- 
ship,  we  do  not  know.  What  we  know  is  that  John  was 
seized  by  Herod  Antipas,  and  put  to  death.  Immediately 
upon  the  interruption  of  his  ministry  Jesus  took  up  his  work, 
not  at  first  claiming  to  be  the  Messiah  any  more  than  John 
had  done  so,  in  whose  preaching  the  idea  of  a  personal  Mes- 
siah entirely  disappeared.  But  the  nature  of  Jesus  was  un- 
like that  of  John.  He  was  more  social  and  humane.  John 
came  neither  eating  nor  drinking.  With  such  asceticism 
Jesus  had  little  sympathy,  while  at  the  same  time  celibacy 
appears  to  have  been  with  him  a  counsel  of  perfection  too 
hard  for  the  majority  of  men.  Instead  of  retreating  into  the 
wilderness  and  summoning  men  to  him,  he  went  to  them  in 
one  of  the  busiest  centres  of  Galilean  life,  Capernaum,  on  the 
commercial  road  to  Syria.  From  Capernaum  he  sallied  out 
in  all  directions  to  the  towns  and  villages  about,  including 
his  own  Nazareth,  where  his  fellow-townsmen  found  it  hard 
to  think  of  him  as  a  prophet.  Out  of  his  followers  he  chose 
twelve  as  his  more  immediate  disciples, —  not,  w^e  may  be 
sure,  in  the  haphazard  way  the  Gospels  represent,  but  not,  as 
proved  by  the  event,  with  any  nice  prevision  of  their  charac- 
ters. 


52  The  Old,   Old  Story. 

For  a  year  or  more  he  continued  his  Galilean  preaching, 
which  was  so  little  different  from  the  best  Pharisaic  preach- 
ing of  the  time,  especially  the  great  Rabbi  Hillel's,  who  was 
still  living  in  the  infancy  of  Jesus,  that  it  may  well  be  that  we 
have  many  of  his  sayings  and  others  of  like  quality  attributed 
to  Jesus.  His  own  teaching  was  at  first  made  up  almost  en- 
tirely of  parables  and  ethical  maxims,  but  we  must  never 
think  of  them  as  poured  out  in  any  such  fashion  as  is  repre- 
sented in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  As  he  went  on,  his 
preaching  aroused  the  enmity  of  the  Pharisees;  and  then  it 
became  much  more  direct  and  vehement,  and  swept  along  in 
a  great  fiery  torrent  of  denunciation  and  rebuke.  Jesus,  a 
myth !  Enveloped  in  mythology  he  was  from  head  to  foot, 
the  more  to  prove  his  absolute  reality,  his  magnificent  virility, 
by  the  consummate  energy  with  which  he  triumphs  over  these 
integuments,  plunging  the  sword  of  his  invective  through 
them  all,  and  through'  the  hypocrites  of  his  own  time, 
straight  to  the  heart  of  your  hypocrisy  and  mine  and  every 
man's  self-righteousness. 

His  relation  to  the  organized  religion  of  his  time  was  not 
an  iconoclastic  one.  The  difference  between  him  and  the 
ecclesiastics  of  his  time  was  one  of  emphasis.  Their  empha- 
sis was  on  Sabbath-keeping,  Levitical  cleanness,  and  so  on. 
His  was  upon  rectitude  and  compassion.  Nor  was  it  enough 
for  him  that  the  outward  life  should  be  correct  and  clean. 
Beyond  the  act  he  saw  the  disposition.  A  deep  inwardness, 
an  intense  spirituality,  was  his  most  characteristic  mark.  To 
look  upon  a  woman  to  lust  after  her  was  to  commit  adultery 
of  the  heart.  How  many  saw  themselves,  as  in  a  mirror,  by 
that  lightning  flash  ?  And  it  was  so  with  every  aspect  of  the 
moral  life.  Were  men  keeping  fast  in  expectation  of  a  car- 
nival, or  were  their  hearts  enamoured  of  the  good  and  true  ? 

And  so  it  was  that,  from  being  quite  as  much  as  Paul  a 
Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees,  and  looking  upon  these  first  as 
his  guides,  and  next  as  his  colaborers,  he  came  at  length  to 
find  himself  arrayed  against  them  with  all  the  energy  of  his 
great  soul,  and  with  all   the   passion   of  his  eager,  flaming 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  53 

heart.  The  things  they  cared  for  most  were  least  of  all  to 
him.  The  things  they  cared  for  least  to  him  were  all  in  all. 
Their  characteristic  trait,  self-righteousness,  became  to  him 
the  one  most  deadly  sin.  "  The  publicans  and  harlots  shall 
go  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven  before  j/(?//."  To  these  amen- 
ities they  made  such  answer  as  a  dominant  ecclesiasticism 
always  makes  to  those  that  question  its  authority.  They 
called  him  a  blasphemer,  a  wine-bibber,  and  a  glutton ;  they 
said  that  he  was  mad ;  they  said  he  had  a  devil ;  and  they  set 
about  to  compass  his  destruction  by  fair  means  or  foul. 

The  consciousness  of  their  enmity,  and  also  of  their  bale- 
ful power,  came  home  to  the  young  prophet  with  appalling 
force.  He  had  been  full  of  hope  and  confidence.  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  was  at  hand, —  a  society  of  just  men  on 
earth.  He  saw  Satan  like  lightning  fall  from  heaven;  that 
is  to  say,  the  bad  cast  out  by  no  long  and  tedious  process, 
but  with  immediate  and  sudden  force.  These  sanguine  ex- 
pectations soon  gave  place  to  others,  dark  as  these  were 
bright  and  cheering.  The  fate  of  John  the  Baptist  he  ac- 
cepted as  his  own,  and  he  began  to  grow  impatient  for  its 
consummation. 

With  increasing  opposition  he  asserted  himself  more 
strongly.  At  first  he  had  no  thought  of  claiming  for  himself 
the  Messianic  office.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  he  asso- 
ciated with  his  idea  of  the  coming  regeneration  of  society 
the  idea  of  a  personal  Messiah.  John  the  Baptist  certainly 
did  not.  Anything  to  the  contrary  is  mere  pious  after- 
thought. But  gradually  the  idea  shaped  itself  in  Jesus' 
mind  that  he  was  himself  the  Messiah.  Martineau,  who 
once  agreed  to  this,  now  doubts  it  altogether,  insisting  that 
the  whole  representation  of  Jesus  as  the  self-conscious  Mes- 
siah is  the  reflection  of  a  later  time.  But  I  cannot  readily 
unlearn  the  lesson  which  I  first  learned  at  this  great  master's 
knee.  There  is  a  wonderful  air  of  reality  in  that  passage 
where,  upon  some  lonely  northern  journey,  trying  his  own 
heart,  he  sounds  the  minds  of  his  apostles,  asking  them, 
"  Whom  do  men  say  that  I  am  t  "     They  answer  that  the  ma- 


54 


The  Old,   Old  Story. 


jority  consider  him  the  forerunner  of  the  Messiah's  kingdom. 
"  But  whom  do  you  say  that  I  am  ?  "  "  Thou  art  the  Mes- 
siah," says  Peter.  "  Thou  answerest  well,"  says  Jesus.  "  So 
I  am."     But  he  forbids  them  to  disclose  the  fact. 

Now,  I  must  beg  you  to  remember  that  the  Messianic  con- 
ception, as  it  entered  into  Jewish  thought  and  feeling  in  the 
time  of  Jesus,  was  as  variable  as  the  wind  and  sea.  It  va- 
ried with  every  prophet,  with  every  rabbi,  with  particular 
localities,  with  each  new  claimant  for  the  solemn  and  majes- 
tic role.  There  was  nothing  to  prevent  Jesus  from  having  a 
conception  of  his  own,  and  measuring  himself  thereby.  It  is 
by  this  that  we  should  measure  him,  not  by  the  gross  mate- 
rialistic conceptions  of  his  disciples  and  his  countrymen  at 
large.  Nevertheless,  his  individual  conception  seems  to 
have  been  largely  formed  by  meditation  on  certain  passages 
in  the  Deutero-Isaiah,  notably  by  chapter  fifty-third.  When 
you  are  listening  to  the  oratorio  of  "The  Messiah,"  —  to  the 
words  of  it, —  you  are  listening,  for  the  most  part,  to  the  Mes- 
sianic mythology  and  theology  in  their  grossest  form.  But 
when  you  come  to  the  solo,  "  He  was  despised  and  rejected," 
you  are  very  near  to  the  reality  of  Jesus'  inmost  conscious- 
ness. With  this  key  Jesus  unlocked  his  heart,  and  we  can  do 
it  now.  On  these  words  he  shaped  his  vision  of  the  things 
that  must  shortly  come  to  pass.  The  Messiah  of  the  popular 
imagination  he  certainly  was  not.  The  spiritual  Messiah  of  his 
own  deepest  thought,  his  own  divinest  dream,  his  own  most 
soaring  aspiration,  he  just  as  certainly  was.  The  mistake 
he  made  was  in  overrating  the  regenerating  power  of  moral 
principle.  But  this  is  a  mistake  so  seldom  made  that  it  is 
worth  a  thousand  of  the  most  indubitable  certainties  of  those 
who  never  make  mistakes,  because  they 

"  dare  not  put  it  to  the  touch 
To  win  or  lose  it  all." 

And  now,  having  inwardly  resolved  that  he  was  himself  the 
Messiah,  he  found  himself  drawn  with  irresistible  attraction 
to  Jerusalem,  the  holy  city  of  his  people.     Why,  but  that  it 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  55 

was  "  one  great  corporation-temple,"  the  stronghold  of  that 
arid  formalism  against  which  he  had  vowed  eternal  war? 
Why  should  he  haunt  the  fringy  edges  of  the  fight,  when  he 
could  plunge  at  once  into  the  thick  of  it?  He  would  go  to 
Jerusalem,  and  there  confront  the  huge  ecclesiasticism  of  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  with  his  own  simple  thoughts  of  life 
and  duty,  and  the  great  Father-love  which  is  indifferent  to 
everything  but  love  and  righteousness,  and  for  the  reality  of 
which  he  needed  no  assurance  other  than  the  steady  beat  of 
his  own  loving  heart.  He  knew  that  God  was  more  than 
that ;  the  fountain  higher  than  the  stream. 

The  rest  is  quickly  told.  With  thousands  of  others  from 
all  parts  of  Judea,  he  went  up  to  Jerusalem  to  attend  the 
Passover.  His  journey  took  him  east  of  the  Jordan,  across 
the  ford  at  Jericho,  then  on  to  Bethany,  and  over  the  Mount 
of  Olives  down  into  the  great  ecclesiastical  city ;  and,  as  he 
went,  especially  at  the  last,  a  great  crowd  of  Galileans  fol- 
lowed him,  shouting  their  faith  in  his  Messiahship,  while 
he,  perhaps,  did  not  realize  the  difference  of  their  conception 
from  his  own.  Or  was  it  that  his  gentle  heart  could  not  deny 
itself  this  tribute  of  acclaim  upon  the  threshold  of  the  tragic 
scene  which  was  to  be  the  last  ?  Reaching  the  city,  he  at 
once  threw  his  gauntlet  in  the  teeth  of  the  ecclesiastical 
religion.  Going  to  the  temple,  he  drove  out  the  venders  of 
sacrificial  doves  and  cattle  from  the  outer  court,  and  for 
several  days  failed  not  to  lift  up  his  voice  in  defiance  and 
rebuke  of  the  prevailing  formalism.  The  authorities,  with 
that  conceit  which  is  universally  characteristic  of  ecclesias- 
tical bodies,  honestly  regarded  him  as  an  impostor,  and 
availed  themselves  of  the  treachery  of  Judas,  the  treasurer 
of  the  little  company,  to  lay  hands  on  him. 

On  the  eve  of  his  arrest  he  kept  the  feast  of  the  Pass- 
over with  his  disciples.  This  feast  was  ordinarily  a  joyous 
one,  but  this  time  it  was  not.  The  Master's  mind  was  too 
intently  fixed  on  his  immediate  future.  For  many  days  he 
had  felt  the  coils  tightening  around  him,  and  he  knew  that 
they  would    crush   him    soon.      "  How  have  I  longed,"    he 


56  The  Old,   Old  Story, 

said,  "  to  eat  this  Passover  with  you !  for  I  shall  not  eat 
it  again  till  it  be  the  true  feast  of  redemption  in  the  king- 
dom of  God."  Moreover,  a  vague  suspicion  haunted  him 
that  one  of  the  twelve  had  gone  over  to  the  enemy.  In  the 
spirit  of  the  ancient  prophets,  he  engaged  in  a  symbolic 
action.  Breaking  the  bread  and  giving  it  to  his  disciples, 
he  said,  "  Take,  eat :  it  is  my  body  !  "  And,  passing  the  cup, 
he  said:  "This  is  my  blood  of  the  covenant  that  shall  flow 
for  the  salvation  of  many.  Of  a  truth  I  tell  you  that  I  shall 
never  again  drink  of  this  Paschal  wine  till  I  drink  it  new  in 
the  established  kingdom  of  God."  The  act  was  perfectly 
spontaneous.  It  is  probable  that  the  broken  bread  and 
ruddy  wine  suddenly  suggested  to  him  his  own  broken  body, 
his  own  streaming  blood.  As  if  the  hope  of  his  return  might 
be  denied  or  long  delayed,  he  begged  his  followers  to  remem- 
ber him  at  each  succeeding  feast.  There  was  no  institution 
of  the  Lord's  Supper.  There  was  an  act  of  natural  human 
tenderness.  Never  was  anything  more  simple.  And,  oh, 
the  pity  of  it  that  from  an  action  and  from  words  so  simple 
and  humane  should  have  come  doctrines  and  practices  more 
foreign  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  than  any  he  endeavored  to 
destroy ! 

"  And,  when  they  had  sung  a  hymn,  they  went  out."  The 
hymn  was  the  usual  hymn  sung  upon  this  occasion.  Then 
came  the  walk  toward  Bethany,  and  in  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane  the  last  and  sharpest  struggle  between  his 
natural  human  sensibility  and  the  imperious  exigencies  of 
his  ideal.  He  did  himself  injustice  by  his  antithesis,  "  The 
spirit,  indeed,  is  willing,  but  the  flesh  is  weak."  It  was  his 
spirit,  not  merely  his  shrinking  flesh,  that  drew  back  from 
the  impending  doom.  The  outcome  of  the  struggle  has 
been  well  divined  by  the  narrator  of  these  last  events: 
"  Father,  if  this  cup  cannot  pass  away  till  I  have  drunk  it, 
thy  will  be  done  !  " 

The  little  that  remains  had  better,  possibly,  remain  untold 
upon  this  happy  day.  You  know  how  he  was  taken  to  the 
house  of  Caiphas,  the  high  priest,  and  condemned  to  death 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  57 

because  he  had  made  himself  amenable  to  the  law  which 
said  that  any  prophet  should  be  put  to  death  whose  teach- 
ings did  not  conform  to  the  received  traditions.  Through 
the  chill  morning  hours  he  was  made  the  laughing-stock  of 
brutal  clowns,  and  buffeted  by  their  rude  hands.  Taken  by 
the  Sanhedrin  to  the  procurator,  Pilate,  their  sentence  was 
confirmed ;  but  the  Roman  death  by  crucifixion  was  substi- 
tuted for  their  favorite  method,  which  was  by  stoning.  Given 
their  choice  to  release  Jesus  or  a  seditious  zealot  who  had 
killed  a  Roman  soldier  in  a  brawl,  they  chose  Barabbas;  and 
Jesus  went  his  way  to  die  the  hardest  death  men's  cruelty 
had  then  devised.  But  a  process,  which  often  lasted  two  or 
three  days,  in  his  case  was  mercifully  shortened  to  some  six 
or  eight  hours.  The  sun  had  not  yet  set  when  the  three 
faithful  women,  who  alone  remained  when  all  the  rest  had 
fled,  knew  by  the  sinking  of  his  head  upon  his  breast  that  he 
was  dead.  Never  was  one  who  loved  his  fellow-men  so  much 
more  cruelly  destroyed.  A  decent  burial  was  accorded  him 
in  the  customary  manner ;  and  the  legend  of  the  part  which 
Joseph  of  Arimathea  took  in  the  last  sad  offices  is  too  gra- 
cious in  its  probability  for  us  to  doubt  its  truth.  "And 
there  was  Mary  Magdalene  and  the  other  Mary  sitting  over 
against  the  sepulchre." 

It  is  quite  possible  that  some  of  you  may  think  the  life  of 
Jesus,  as  I  have  set  it  forth,  is  insufficient  to  account  for 
eighteen  centuries  of  Christian  history,  with  their  immense 
dogmatic  and  ecclesiastical  developments.  And  why  should 
it  account  for  these  things  ?  Does  the  stream  a  child  may 
ford  far  up  among  the  hills  account  for  the  Hudson  or  the 
Mississippi  ?  Historic  Christianity  is  the  life  of  Jesus  plus 
a  thousand  confluents  of  thought  and  government  and  social 
organization.  It  is  Greek  metaphysics,  and  not  Jesus,  that 
accounts  for  the  Nicene  theology.  It  is  the  Roman  Empire, 
and  not  Jesus,  that  accounts  for  Papal  Christianity.  To  re- 
proach Jesus,  as  so  many  do,  for  all  the  follies  and  iniquities 
of  historic  Christianity,  is  as  if  one  should  reproach  a  moun- 
tain stream,  as  clear  as  crystal,  edged  with  delicate  flowers, 


58  The  Old,   Old  Story. 

for  all  the  imperfections  and  impurities  of  a  mighty  river 
which  did  indeed  begin  its  course  far  up  among  the  hills,  but 
into  which  a  thousand  storms  have  washed  the  ruin  of  the 
fields,  and  on  whose  banks  men  have  built  up  their  manu- 
factories and  abattoirs,  and  into  whose  waters  they  have 
drained  their  towns  and  cities  of  their  waste.  But  still,  far 
up  among  the  hills,  the  stream  retains  its  crystal  purity ;  and 
still,  for  all  the  centuries  have  done  to  soil  historic  Christi- 
anity, the  life  of  Jesus  remains  for  us  among  the  hills  of 
Galilee  as  sweet  and  pure  as  ever  mountain  cup  which  all 
night  long  mirrors  the  quiet  stars.  Nor  must  it  go  unsaid 
that,  as  the  mighty  river,  although  variously  soiled,  is  apt  for 
uses  that  the  upland  stream  cannot  fulfil,  even  so  historic 
Christianity,  however  soiled  by  various  blood  and  filth,  has 
done  a  mightier  work  than  Jesus  could  perform,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  it  has  been  a  flood  of  human  life,  of  many 
times  and  races,  blending  into  one  glorious  sweep,  in  its  full 
course  rejoicing  many  fields,  and  bearing  many  a  costly 
freight  upon  its  breast. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  actual  Jesus,  as  we  have 
found  him  in  the  New  Testament,  is  very  different  from  the 
theological  Christ ;  and  it  may  be  that  few  will  be  disposed 
to  take  the  former  and  to  let  the  latter- go.  For  the  Jesus  of 
the  New  Testament,  in  those  parts  of  it  which  have  least  of 
metaphysical  distortion,  and  with  due  allowance  made  for 
mythological  additions,  is  not  a  god  or  demigod  or  super- 
angelic  being  or  miraculous  personality.  He  is  —  the  man 
Jesus.  He  is  every  inch  a  man  ;  but  such  a  man  that  in  the 
coming  ages  of  the  world  he  will,  I  dare  believe,  when  every 
superstition  that  invests  him  has  been  stripped  away,  on  the 
basis  of  his  simple  manhood  win  for  himself  a  higher  place 
in  men's  regard,  a  warmer  place  in  their  affections,  than  any 
other  who  has  cast  his  bread  upon  the  centuries,  trusting  it 
would  return  to  him  in  God's  good  time.  Only  a  man ! 
Only  a  great  loving  heart  that  dared  believe  the  Eternal 
Father  kinder  than  itself!  Only  a  man  whose  hatred  of 
oppression,  whose  scorn  of  hypocrisy,  and  whose  reprobation 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  59 

of  self-righteousness  were  like  lightning  from  the  cloud !  Only 
a  man  who,  when  he  had  put  his  hand  to  the  plough,  would 
not  turn  back,  though  it  was  clear  the  deepening  furrow  was 
to  be  his  grave  !  Only  a  man  who  thought  that  righteous- 
ness and  truth  and  love  were  all  in  all,  and  died  in  attesta- 
tion of  the  faith  which  not  a  hundred  deaths  could  force 
him  to  forego ! 

Yes :  he  was  only  this.  And,  because  he  was  only  this,  I 
charge  you  do  not  let  the  superstitious  reverence  of  others 
prejudice  your  right  and  privilege  to  honor  him  with  natural 
reverence  and  honest  admiration.  Take  him  for  what  he 
was,  and  you  cannot  make  your  churches  or  your  homes  too 
bright  upon  his  yearly  festival,  your  Christmas  cheer  too 
pure  and  glad  to  celebrate  the  immortal  beauty  of  his  life 
the  transcendent  purity  and  holiness  of  his  ideal. 

As  I  was  thinking  of  these  things  the  other  day,  and  won- 
dering what  answer  we  should  make  if  any  one  should  chal- 
lenge our  participation  in  this  gladsome  feast,  I  found  my 
thought  was  going  to  a  certain  rhyme  and  rhythm  of  its 
own  ;  and  I  said,  "  I  will  end  my  sermon  with  these  verses 
upon  Christmas  Day."     And  so  I  will :  — 

What  means  for  us  this  sacred  day 

By  all  the  happy  children  blest, 
So  long  desired  it  breaks  in  dreams 

The  quiet  of  their  rest  ? 

Not  ours  the  angels'  peaceful  song 
From  heaven's  height  nor  orient  star, 

The  magi's  trackless  way  to  guide 
With  radiance  pure  and  far. 

But  still  upon  the  inward  ear 

That  song  descends  with  music  sweet, 

Our  hearts  to  cheer  on  darksome  ways, 
With  patience  for  our  feet. 

It  sings  the  hope  of  things  to  be 

Beyond  the  anger  and  the  strife. 
When  all  the  cruel  hate  shall  cease, 

And  Love  be  Lord  of  life. 


6o  The  Old,   Old  Story. 

No  fabled  mystery  is  ours 

Of  One  who  for  her  honor  made 

The  peasant-maid  His  heavenly  bride  ; 
And  she  was  not  afraid. 

No  greater  mystery  we  crave 
Than  every  gentle  mother  shows 

When,  by  God's  grace,  another  life 
Within  her  own  she  knows. 

What  need  of  miracle  to  make 
One  Son  of  Man  the  Son  of  God, 

When  all  the  sons  of  men  that  e'er 
Earth's  temple-floor  have  trod 

Have  but  one  lineage  great  and  high, 
One  Father  who  is  over  all 

The  heights  of  heaven,  the  deeps  of  hell ; 
Who  hears  them  when  they  call .-' 

Nor  less  if  Brahm  or  Zeus  the  name 
Than  when  as  God  or  Lord  addressed  : 

The  prayer  that  trusts  and  loves  the  most 
For  Him  is  ever  best. 

O  brother  of  the  righteous  will, 
O  brother  full  of  power  and  grace, 

Without  one  thought  of  fear  or  shame, 
We  come  before  thy  face  ! 

Not  ours  to  hail  thee  as  the  saints 
Of  olden  times,  as  some  to-day, 

God,  very  God ;  and  still  to  us 
Thou  art  the  Life,  the  Way. 

Thou  art  the  Life :  in  thee  we  find 
The  glory  that  our  lives  might  wear 

Tf  we  for  love  and  truth  and  right 
Could  learn  to  do  and  dare. 

Thou  art  the  Way ;  for,  still  to  know 
What  goodness  ever  reigns  above. 

There  is  no  other  way  than  thine, — 
To  live  the  life  of  love. 

One  God  have  we  !     Sufficeth  He 
For  every  want  our  souls  can  know; 

He  holds  us  with  His  loving  hand. 
He  will  not  let  us  go. 


■| 


The  Old,   Old  Story.  6i 

In  thee  no  godhead  do  we  seek ; 

Yea,  and  no  godhead  can  we  find  : 
Enough  the  loving  human  heart, 

The  pure  and  holy  mind. 

We  love  thee  for  thy  tender  love 

To  want  and  sin  and  sorrow  shown ; 
We  reverence  all  thy  truth  and  grace ; 

We  worship  God  alone. 

Lo,  in  such  heart  we  come  with  all 

Who  hail  thee  on  this  sacred  day 
In  various  speech !     Thou  wilt  not  spurn 

Our  simple  gift  away. 


THE  FULLNESS  OF  TIME. 


I  TRUST  we  are  not  yet  so  far  advanced  across  the  thresh- 
old of  the  year  1893  that  my  train  of  thought  this  morning* 
has  on  board  nothing  friendly  to  your  aspiration  or  service- 
able to  your  needs.  It  was  running  very  smoothly  in  my 
mind  a  fortnight  back,  when  it  was  suddenly  derailed  by 
some  derangement  of  the  motive  power.  Last  Sunday  there 
was  another  train  upon  the  track,  but  now  it  is  clear  again ; 
and  it  remains  for  you  to  judge  how  much  of  my  original 
freight  was  of  that  perishable  character  which,  even  in  such 
a  temperature  as  we  haye  had  of  late,  does  not  admit  of 
any  stoppage  on  the  w^ay. 

When  the  year  was  reckoned  from  the  21st  of  March  in- 
stead of  from  the  ist  of  January,  doubtless  that  day  brought 
with  it  the  same  forward  look  that  the  first  days  of  the  year 
bring  with  them  now,  and  the  20th  of  March  the  same  back- 
ward look  with  which  on  December  31  we  habitually  regard 
the  year  then  drawing  to  its  close.  But  can  it  be  that  all 
the  measures  of  our  time  are  equally  unreal,  that,  if  our  cen- 
turies had  each  a  different  term, —  each  thirty,  forty,  fifty 
years  earlier  than  that  familiar  to  our  thought, —  they  would 
present  the  same  accumulative  and  climacteric  appearance 
which  they  do  now,  as  from  the  nearing  summit  of  our  own 
we  look  back  along  the  hoary  peaks  ?  It  may  be  so  ;  but  it 
is  impossible  for  us  to  take  a  dozen  century  strides  backward 
into  the  past,  and  at  each  one  pause  and  consider  what  was 
going  on  as  each  particular  century  neared  its  end,  without 
having  it  borne  in  upon  us  with  almost  convincing  weight 
that  the  centuries  are  no  mere  arbitrary  measurements  of  life 

♦January  15.     The  sermon  was  intended  for  January  i,  but  Mr.  Chadwick  was  pre- 
vented by  sickness  from  preaching  it. 


64  ^/^^  Fullness  of  Time. 

and  history,  but  something  vital  and  organic,  something 
"  growing  like  a  tree,"  and  bearing  fruit  in  its  complete 
maturity  as  never  in  its  youth  or  prime.  Of  course,  the  first 
stride  back  may  breed  in  us  an  undue  sense  of  this  cumula- 
tive and  climacteric  development ;  for  it  brings  us  to  1793, 
a  year  so  memorable  that  it  has  become  very  much  the 
fashion  to  drop  the  "  17,"  and  say  simply  "  '93."  Few  years 
in  the  world's  whole  history  have  stood  out  as  that  does, —  so 
dark,  so  red,  so  terrible.  Next  Friday  will  be  January  20, 
and  that  will  be  the  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  execution 
of  Louis  XVI. ;  and  that  was  the  beginning  of  the  Terror 
which  went  on  with  ever  fiercer  passion  until  it  had  de- 
stroyed the  leaders  who  had  raised  a  Frankenstein  they 
could  not  quell.  Here,  in  our  own  America,  we  were  mak- 
ing the  trial  trip  with  our  new  Constitution, —  not  the  frigate, 
but  the  national  craft  so  called,  which  had  been  launched 
April  30,  1789,  only  five  days  before  the  meeting  of  the 
States-General  in  France,  an  event  in  which  the  Revolution 
was  as  snugly  folded  as  the  oak  within  the  acorn's  tiny  cup. 
Another  century  stride,  and  we  are  again  confronted  with  a 
series  of  remarkable  events.  In  Salem,  Mass.,  we  find  all  the 
superstition  and  fanaticism  of  the  Puritan  mind  culminating 
in  the  delusion  of  witchcraft,  and  the  awful  tragedies  which 
that  delusion  carried  in  its  train.  But  men  who  could  be 
so  superstitious  and  fanatical  could  be  eager  and  strenuous 
for  their  political  rights  ;  and  the  English  Revolution  of  1688, 
which  terminated  the  parenthesis  of  arbitrary  power  which, 
after  Cromwell's  death,  included  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 
(twenty-five  years)  and  three  years  of  his  brother  James's, 
had  its  fit  correspondent  in  New  England,  where  the  govern- 
ment of  Sir  Edmund  Andros  was  abolished  in  a  summary 
manner.  And,  as  if  history  had  a  passion  for  coincidence,  it 
was  on  the  19th  of  April  —  a  day  which  eighty-six  years  later 
would  become  one  of  the  proudest  in  our  annals,  because  of 
what  was  done  at  Lexington  and  Concord  —  that  Sir  Ed- 
mund's power  was  broken,  and  New  England  became  once 
more  a  self-governing  community. 


The  Fullness  of  Time.  65 

Now,  take  another  century  stride  backward  into  the  past, 
and  where  are  you  landed  ?     Sure  enough,  upon  the  deck  of 
Admiral  Drake's  flag-ship,  and  the  great  Spanish  Armada  is 
coming  proudly  on  to  meet  him  and  its  doom,  the  very  climax 
of  the  century  for  English  history  ;  and  about  the  same  time  — 
an  event  of  much  greater  importance  for  the  most  of  us  —  one 
William  Shakspere  was  just  starting  out  upon  that  course  of 
play-writing  which  was  to  furnish  the  English  mind  with  more 
food  and  stimulus  than  any  other  individual's  work,  if  not  than 
all  the  rest  together,  while  across  the  channel  the  white  plume 
of  Henry  of  .Navarre  was  a  sign  and  symbol  around  which 
were  rallying  the  forces  of  a  new  and  better  time.     Another 
century  back,  and  where  do  we  find  ourselves  ?     Why,  on 
the  Santa  Maria's  deck  with  Christopher  Columbus,  "sailing 
straight  on  into  chaos  untried."     We  find  ourselves  in  the 
full  tide    of    the  Italian  Renaissance.     Michel  Angelo  and 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  have  arrived  at  their  maturity ;  Raphael, 
in  1493,  is  ten  years  old,  and  Martin  Luther  is  of  exactly  the 
same    age ;  and  Copernicus,  in  whose  astronomy  the    solar 
universe  was  to  change  its  front,  was  twice  as  old  as  these. 
There  never  was  a  fruitfuller  or  more  prophetic  time.     The 
discovery  of  the  New  World  alone  meant  an  oceanic  civiliza- 
tion for  one  that  had  been  potamic  and  thalassic ;    i.e.,  condi- 
tioned by  the  boundaries  and  separations  which  first  rivers 
and  then  seas  afforded.     By  making  the  New  World  an  ob- 
ject of  contention  among  the  nations  of  Western  Europe,  it 
was  to  try  the  strength  of  Holland,  Spain,  France,  and  Eng- 
land, and  in  the  end  to  bring  off  the  latter  more  than  con- 
queror,—  not   because  her  fleets  and  armies  were  so  much 
stronger  than  her  enemies,  but  because  to  her  belonged  the 
genius  for  colonization  as  to  no  other  people  on  the   earth 
since  the  Phoenicians  and  the  Greeks  had  spread   their  colo- 
nies   along   every   habitable  portion   of   the    Mediterranean 
coasts. 

Another  century  stride  takes  us  to  Chaucer's  England  ;  but, 
while  he  was  musing,  the  fire  of  revolution  burned.  Our 
labor  troubles  of  to-day  are  very  mild  compared  with  those 


66  The  Fullness  of  Time. 

which  turned  the  realm  of  Richard  11.  upside  down,  vviien 
Wat  Tyler  marched  upon  London  with  a  hundred  thousand 
men  of  Kent  and  Essex,  hanging  every  lawyer  that  they  met 
upon  the  way  and  spoiling  the  nobility  and  the  clergy  with  a 
ruthless  hand.  Yet  so  it  happened  that  serfdom  was  hence- 
forth in  England  doomed  to  perish,  and  the  rights  of  labor 
were  to  be  recognized  and  its  service  paid  as  they  had  never 
been  before.  For  those  to  whom  history  is  no  mere  matter 
of  wars  and  fightings  and  political  intrigues,  but  a  matter 
of  the  people's  life,  the  growth  of  their  prosperity  and  self- 
respect,  the  history  of  the  English  people  has  not  a  better 
quarter  of  a  century  to  show  than  the  last  quarter  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  And  the  religious  interest  of  the  period 
is  not  a  whit  behind,  seeing  that  it  included  the  last  years  of 
Wiclif  and  the  first  of  Lollardry;  and  this  means  the  begin- 
nings of  the  English  Reformation,  the  creation  of  those  ele- 
ments which  gave  to  that  Reformation,  when  it  came,  a 
depth,  a  seriousness,  and  a  reality,  which  it  could  hardly 
have  derived  from  the  resolve  of  Henry  VIII.  to  substitute 
a  young  and  pretty  for  an  old  and  faded  wife,  whether  the 
Pope  would  let  him  or  forbear. 

Another  century  stride  into  the  past,  and  we  come  to  one 
of  the  great  landmarks  of  history,  the  end  of  the  crusades, 
after  two  centuries  of  ups  and  downs.  And  to  the  careless 
eye  the  end  seemed  absolute  defeat,  leaving  the  matter  just 
where  it  began, —  the  Christians  driven  out  of  Palestine  at 
every  point  and  the  Mohammedans  in  complete  possession. 
But  we  know  to-day  that  the  crusades,  if  they  did  not  ac- 
complish all  they  hoped,  or  anything  of  that,  did  more  and 
better.  A  dozen  Holy  Lands,  a  hundred  holy  sepulchres, 
would  have  been  nothing  to  the  accomplishment  which  was 
the  waking  of  Europe  from  the  torpor  of  the  Middle  Age,  the 
end  of  feudalism,  the  rise  of  nationality,  the  beginnings  of 
the  Renaissance, —  Greece  rising  from  the  dead  "with  the 
New  Testament  in  her  hand,"  with  Plato  and  her  poets,  too, 
and  with  the  hunger  for  beauty  in  her  heart.  I  know  that 
you  are  getting  weary  of  this  long  and  painful  march  ;  but  two 


Ihe  Fullness  of  Time.  6/ 

more  strides,  and  you  may  lay  aside  your  century  boots,  and 
settle  down  into  your  normal  pace.  The  century  back  from 
1293  to  1 193  is  not  one  to  be  taken  at  a  stride.  We  should 
like  to  linger  by  the  way;  for  it  was  the  century /^r  excellence 
of  Gothic  architecture,  the  century  in  which  the  cathedrals 
of  Burgos  and  Amiens  and  Salisbury  and  Westminster  si- 
multaneously lifted  their  ineffable  glories  into  the  astonished 
air,  that  had  not  had  such  beauteous  things  intrusted  to  its 
keeping  from  the  beginning  of  the  world.  "  Hell  was  moved 
at  the  coming  of  John,"  says  a  contemporary  of  that  faith- 
less king;  and  in  1193  he  was  making  a  hell  of  England  by 
his  endeavors  to  usurp  his  brother's  throne  while  the  Lion- 
hearted  was  off  on  a  crusade.  But  the  last  decade  of  the 
twelfth  century  was  a  very  hot  and  stirring  time,  the  time  of 
Innocent  HI.;  —  and  what  a  blessed  innocent  he  was,  the 
persecutor  of  the  Albigenses !  —  the  mid-point  in  that  temporal 
triumph  of  the  Papacy. of  which  Hildebrand  furnishes  the 
anterior  and  Boniface  VIII.  the  posterior  limit !  Another 
century  back,  to  1093,  and  William  the  Conqueror  is  but  five 
years  dead,  the  great  Norman  cathedrals,  of  which  Durham 
is  our  best  example,  are  going  up  in  England,  Peter  the 
Hermit  is  returning  from  the  Holy  Land  with  all  the  ardors 
of  the  first  crusade  pent  in  his  throbbing  breast, —  ardors 
which  were  soon  to  set  ablaze  all  Western  Europe  with  his 
fiery  zeal. 

I  do  not  know  what  luck  I  should  have  in  finding  confir- 
mation of  my  thesis, —  the  cumulative  and  climacteric  devel- 
opment of  the  centuries  —  if  I  should  go  still  further  back. 
I  have  not  even  tried  to  think  it  out.  But  to  stop  where  I 
have  stopped  is  not  an  arbitrary  proceeding.  The  Norman 
Conquest  of  England,  in  1066,  is  for  the  most  of  us  a  point 
to  reckon  from, —  a  turning-point  in  history,  almost  as  con- 
spicuous as  the  Protestant  Reformation  or  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era.  Then,  too,  it  was  in  the  eleventh  century 
that  men  made  up  their  minds  that  the  world  was  not  com- 
ing to  an  end,  and  that  they  would  go  to  work  and  make  it  as 
much  worse  or  better  as  they  could  without  delay. 


6S  The  Fullness  of  Time. 

And  now  do  not  imagine  that  I  am  completely  caught 
in  my  own  toils,  and  that,  as  I  have  gone  back  along  the 
centuries,  taking  you  with  me,  I  have  been  unaware  that 
you  have  been  more  or  less  sceptical  of  my  results ;  for  I 
have  not  gone  so  fast  but  that  here  and  there  you  have 
taken  in  the  intervening  times  and  made  a  note  of  them, 
of  their  circumstances  and  events,  as  great  and  as  impor- 
tant as  any  I  have  named,  as  marking  in  its  turn  each 
century's  grand  climacteric.  Thus,  for  example,  as  I  was 
whisking  5^ou  from  the  comparatively  dull  and  stupid  present 
back  to  1793,  you  made  the  following  note  :  "  Civil  War  be- 
gins in  the  United  States  1861,  and  ends  1865.  Slavery 
abolished  in  rebellious  States  Jan.  i,  1863,  and  in  all  the 
States  by  constitutional  amendment  February,  1865."  Then, 
as  we  made  our  stride  from  1793  to  1693,  you  made  the  fol- 
lowing notes:  "Declaration  of  Independence,  1776;  con- 
ceded by  England  in  1783;  Wolfe's  capture  of  Quebec  in 
1759,  terminating  the  dispute  of  France  and  England  for 
the  possession  of  North  America."  And  as  we  took  the 
next  stride  back,  from  1693  to  1593,  you  jotted  down,  about 
midway,  Naseby  and  Worcester  and  Dunbar  and  some  other 
famous  battles,  and  "Charles  I.  beheaded  Jan.  30,  1649," — 
events  of  capital  importance  to  the  history  of  political  lib- 
erty in  general  and  to  that  of  Oliver  Cromwell  in  particu- 
lar. I  had  an  eye  to  these  things  at  the  time ;  and,  if  I  said 
nothing  about  them,  it  was  not  because  I  had  learned  a  les- 
son of  the  Trinitarian  who  quoted  the  text  of  the  Three 
Heavenly  Witnesses  to  a  Unitarian.  "  Why,"  said  the  Uni- 
tarian, "that  is  spurious.  It  isn't  in  any  Greek  MS.  before 
the  fourteenth  century."  "  Oh,"  said  the  Trinitarian,  "  I 
knew  that,  but  I   thought  perhaps  you  didn't." 

But  I  have  not  presumed  upon  your  ignorance  of  the 
periods  intervening  between  those  on  which  I  have  endeav- 
ored to  fix  your  particular  regard.  I  have  imagined  you,  as 
I  have  said,  regarding  these  intervening  periods  in  your 
swift  course,  and  making  a  note  of  circumstances  and  events 
quite  as  important  as  any  that  have  crowned  each  separate 


The  Fullness  of  Time.  69 

century's  close.  So  much  the  better ;  for  you  will  remember 
that  the  subject  of  my  discourse  this  morning  is  "  The  Full- 
ness of  Time,"  —  that  is  to  say,  how  full  time  is  of  history,  of 
great  events,  of  "  deeds  of  daring  rectitude,"  and  "  scorn  of 
miserable  aims  that  end  with  self,"  and  "  thoughts  sublime 
that  pierce  the  night  like  stars,  and  by  their  mild  persistence 
urge  man's  course  to  vaster  issues."  And  while  there  is  a 
tide  in  the  affairs  of  men  which  has  its  ebb  and  flow,  and 
while  some  times  are  dull  and  spiritless  and  others  full  of 
noble  speech  and  God-like  action,  and  while,  without  any 
forcing  of  the  note,  it  would  appear  that  the  great  periods 
and  events  of  history  have  often  coincided  with  the  centu- 
ries' ripest  years,  yet  have  we  here  no  argument  to  prove  that 
in  very  deed  and  truth  the  centuries  have  a  vital  and  organic 
character,  a  cumulative  and  climacteric  development ;  for,  if 
we  had  taken  any  other  starting-point  and  gone  back  from 
it  by  century  strides,  at  -the  end  of  every  stride  we  should 
have  found  ourselves  confronted  by  events  as  serious  and 
important,  by  personalities  as  strenuous  and  grand,  as  those 
that  have  confronted  us  at  every  stage  of  the  long  receding 
journey  that  we  have  already  made.  It  is  not  because  the 
centuries  have  a  cumulative  and  climacteric  development,  and 
flower  only  at  the  top,  like  famous  Indian  trees  about  which 
we  have  read ;  it  is  because  Time  is  so  full  of  thought  and 
action,  purpose  and  resolve,  so  full  of  great  events,  great  per- 
sonalities, the  beginnings  and  the  conclusions  of  great  move- 
ments, changes,  revolutions,  that  at  each  century  stride  we 
have  found  such  noise  and  stir,  such  shaping  and  misshaping 
of  the  ends  of  human  life.  Try  for  yourselves  :  take  any  other 
starting-points,  1875,  ^^  1850,  or  1825,  and  work  your  way 
back  from  that  by  centuries  or  half-centuries,  and  see  if  you 
do  not  find  at  every  halt  a  busy,  throbbing  life,  and  that  great 
events  and  towering  personalities,  although  they  may  not  be 
close  at  hand,  are  never  far  away.  Oh,  it  is  wonderful  how 
this  ant-hill  which  we  call  the  earth  pulses  with  multitudinous 
activity,  and  what  a  stir  and  bustle  has  been  kept  up  from 
the  beginning  by  these  little  creatures  that  run  to  and  fro 


70  The  Fullness  of  Time. 

upon  their  various  errands !  For,  if  you  will  pause  and  con- 
sider, you  will  perceive  at  once  that  the  fullness  of  time 
which  corresponds  to  that  succession  of  events  which  we  call 
history  is  hollowness  and  emptiness  compared  with  that  full- 
ness of  time  which  has  been  correspondent  with  the  actual 
conditions  of  the  ever-changing  world. 

For  while  those  great  events  which  we  call  history  were 
taking  place, —  Caesar  crossing  his  Rubicon,  Xerxes  shat- 
tered at  Salamis,  Charles  Martel  hammering  the  Saracens  at 
Poitiers,  William  crushing  Harold  at  Senlac,  the  English 
barons  forcing  Magna  Charta  from  John's  unwilling  hand, 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation, —  while  all  these  things  have  been  taking 
place,  Time,  that  illimitable  continent,  has  not  been  filled 
with  these  alone.  These  alone  would  have  rattled  round  in 
it,  like  the  Positivist  audience  —  "  three  persons  and  no  God  " 
—  in  a  great  London  hall.  For,  even  while  these  things 
were  going  on,  getting  accomplished  in  one  way  or  another, 
how  much  more  was  going  on,  getting  accomplished  in  some 
other  way  !  —  suns  rising  every  day  and  making  every  evening 
beautiful ;  stars  shining  with  their  punctual  light ;  the  incon- 
stant moon  keeping  her  lovers  company  in  their  varying 
moods ;  the  old  bounty  going  on  without  a  word  of  explana- 
tion ;  men  and  women  telling  each  other  the  old,  old  story 
of  which  they  never  tire ;  uncounted  millions  going  forth  to 
their  work  and  their  labor  till  the  evening,  and,  with  that,  the 
aching  weariness  and  the  welcome  rest ;  the  constant  miracle 
of  birth  and  mystery  of  death ;  wonders  of  art  and  song  ; 
science  penetrating  to  the  heavenly  and  terrestrial  arcana 
with  infinite  patience  and,  at  times,  "great  trembling  of  the 
heart."  Even  while  the  great  things  which  we  call  history 
were  getting  accomplished,  all  of  these  lesser  things  were 
going  on, —  lesser  individually,  but  in  their  aggregate  how 
much  the  greater  part !  And,  were  it  not  for  these  and  such 
as  these,  what  would  "fill  up  as  'twere  the  gaps  of  centu- 
ries," the  immense  interstices  and  voids  between  the  events 
which  even  the  fullest  of  our  chronological  tables  have  set 


The  Fidliiess  of  Time.  yi 

down  for  our  instruction  ?  Time  was  not  empty  in  those  un- 
recorded years.  The  days  did  not  drag  that  brought  no 
Marathon  or  PhiHppi,  no  Agincourt  or  Poitiers,  no  Auster- 
litz  or  Waterloo.  They  were  full  of  light  and  beauty,  love 
and  toil,  joy  and  sorrow,  life  and  death.  They  were  too 
short  for  all  the  labor  to  be  done,  and  all  the  happy  inter- 
change of  lovers'  gifts,  and  all  the  mothers'  crooning  over 
their  sweet  babes,  each  last  the  noblest  offspring  of  all  time. 
The  thing  that  has  been  shall  be,  and  it  is. 

"  Shines  the  last  age,  the  next  with  hope  is  seen ; 
To-day  slinks  poorly  off,  unmarked,  between  j 
Future  or  Past  no  richer  secret  folds, 
O  friendless  Present,  than  thy  bosom  holds." 

It  is  a  most  contracted  limitation  of  the  Present  which  in- 
cludes only  events  of  that  great  magnitude  which  marks  the 
greatest  headlands  on  the  coast  of  the  historian's  chronology. 
How  many  of  the  wars  and  tumults  that  we  read  about  with 
a  throbbing  pulse  and  leaping  heart  were  the  merest  battles 
of  a  few  kites  and  crows  compared  with  that  pro-slavery 
resolve  and  passion  to  enslave  our  continent,  and  that  anti- 
slavery  resolve  and  passion  that  the  monstrous  thing  should 
not  be  done,  which  for  twenty  years  confronted  each  other 
in  the  pulpit  and  the  press  and  the  political  arena,  and  then 
for  four  years  more  on  the  embattled  field !  Yet  this  whole 
history,  in  its  more  definite  aggregation  of  events,  has 
been  a  matter  of  the  present  time,  within  the  lifetime  of 
men  and  women  who  are  only  just  beginning  to  grow  old. 
Meantime  there  has  transpired  in  theological  circles  an  intel- 
lectual change  so  great  that  the  whole  history  of  theological 
opinion  has  nothing  to  compare  with  it  in  the  same  length  of 
time  or  ten  times  over.  We  are  told  that  the  world's  mate- 
rial wealth  has  been  increased  by  a  more  splendid  aggregate 
in  the  last  century  than  for  a  dozen  centuries  before.  And 
the  increase  of  its  intellectual  wealth  has  not  been  less  mag- 
nificent ;  no,  nor  the  increase  of  its  theological  intelligence 
and    liberality.     Why,  here  is  this  great  Presbyterian  body 


72  The  Fullness  of  Time. 

which,  only  a  few  years  ago,  we  imagined  as  impregnable  to 
any  skyey  influence  of  modern  critical  science  as  the  ice-cap 
of  Greenland,  over  which  Lieutenant  Peary  has  been  sledg- 
ing for  our  entertainment  and  instruction,  to  any  influence 
of  the  Northern  sun  ;  and,  behold  !  it  is  as  if  that  had  begun 
to  crack  and  heave  and  melt  and  detach  great  portions  of 
itself,  and  send  them  drifting  off,  until,  in  warmer  latitudes, 
they  should  be  resolved  into  the  general  flood !     The  case  of 
Dr.  Briggs  presented  so  many  points  that  there  was  danger 
of  intellectual  confusion  in  our  apprehension  of  the  matter. 
Take  just  this  one :   Dr.  Briggs  singled  out  Dr.  Martineau 
as  a  good  Christian,  salvable  and  safe  here  and  hereafter, 
notwithstanding   his  Unitarian  and  critical  opinions.     And 
how  much  of    a   heretic   is   Dr.   Martineau  ?      So  much  of 
one  that  he  is  forced  to  the  conclusion  "  that  Christianity  " 
(I  copy  his  own  words),  "  as  defined  or  understood  in  all  the 
churches  which  formulate  it,  has  been  mainly  evolved  from 
what  is  transient  and  perishable  in  its  sources  j  from  what  is 
unhistorical  in  its  traditions,  mythological  in  its  preconcep- 
tions,   and   misapprehended  in  the  oracles   of  its  prophets. 
From  the  fable  of  Eden  to  the  imagination  of  the  last  trum- 
pet," he  continues,  "  the  whole  story  of  the  divine  order  of 
the  world  [as  related  in  the  traditional  theology]  is  dislo- 
cated and  deformed."     Dr.  Briggs,  aware  of  this  overwhelm- 
ing accusation  of  traditional  Christianity  from  the  pen  of  Dr. 
Martineau,  nevertheless  "finds  no  fault  in  the  man."     And 
in  full  view  of  this  the  New  York  Presbyterians,  in  their  sol- 
emn meeting,  inquiring  what  is  the  matter  with    Professor 
Briggs,  answer  that,  if  he  is  not  perfectly  sound,  he  is  sound 
enough  to  enjoy  the  fellowship  of  the  Presbyterian  saints. 
Truly,  to  this  complexion  have  we  come  at  length :  that  one 
may    entertain    the    most   destructive    criticism    ever   urged 
against    traditional    Christianity    by   a    great    thinker   and 
scholar,  and  not  be  cut  off  from  the  eternal  hope  nor  even 
from  the  visible  Church. 

But  if  the  "  friendless  Present "  were  not  characterized  by 
events  and  processes  that  ask  no  handicap  for  any  others  in 


The  Fullness  of  Time.  73 

the  course  of  history,  in  order  that  they  may  be  even  with 
them  in  the  race,  how  full  the  time  which  has  contained  these 
great  events  and  processes  would  be  of  wonderful  and  pre- 
cious things !  How  full  of  life  !  Some  fourteen  hundred  mill- 
ions of  human  beings  alone  surging  up  out  of  the  mysterious 
background  of  the  world  since  the  beginning  of  our  Civil 
War,  as  many  more  since  Garrison  said  in  the  first  number  of 
the  Liberator,  "  I  am  in  earnest ;  I  will  not  equivocate  ;  I  will 
not  excuse ;  I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch  ;  and  I  will  be 
heard."  And  what  has  this  life  been  full  of  in  its  turn  ?  Of 
emptiness,  no  doubt,  to  a  considerable  extent,  or  of  mere 
greedy  appetites  and  sordid  cares  and  trivial  enjoyments,  but 
here  and  there,  in  a  few  million  cases,  of  faithful  work,  of  un- 
speakable fidelity,  of  unmeasurable  happiness  and  peace  and 
joy.  But  the  fullness  of  the  time  has  not  been  by  any  means 
exhausted  by  the  swarming  human  life.  About  five  hundred 
thousand  different  species  of  plants  have  contributed  their 
quota.  Species,  mind  you!  How  many  varieties  does  that 
mean  ?  There  are  seventy  species  of  the  golden-rod  alone ; 
how  many  varieties  I  do  not  know.  Of  the  roses  there  must  be 
many  more,  and  the  apple-blossoms  are  the  prettiest  of  them 
all.  Think  of  the  individual  plant-life  which  these  species  and 
varieties  involve  !  You  cannot  think  of  it.  A  single  dande- 
lion-blossom furnishes  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pollen 
grains,  a  single  peony  three  or  four  millions.  There  is  no 
such  prodigal  as  Nature  in  the  Father's  house,  and  every  day 
he  makes  a  feast  for  her  and  kills  the  fatted  calf.  The  species 
of  plants  are  absolutely  many,  but  compared  with  the  animal 
species  they  are  few.  There  are  only  half  a  million  of  the 
former  :  there  are  two  millions  of  the  latter.  And  that  means 
how  many  individuals  1  Again,  you  cannot  compass  it.  Too 
many,  you  may  think,  when  the  census  is  of  the  house-fly  or 
mosquito.  But  you  should  look  at  the  matter  from  their 
point  of  view.  Let  us  be  glad  there  are  so  many  living 
things  to  revel  in  the  joy  of  life,  and  not  grudge  them  now 
and  then  a  drop  of  our  own  blood  to  cheer  their  tiny 
hearts  ! 


74  J^f^^  Fullness  of  Time. 

To  life,  add  beauty.  How  full  the  days,  years,  and  genera- 
tions are  of  this  commodity !  Much  of  it  is  the  beauty  of 
life,  of  the  plant's  flowering,  of  the  tree's  handsome  bole  and 
swaying  limbs  and  multitudinous  leaves,  of  the  iris  mantling 
on  the  burnished  dove,  the  swallow's  motion  and  the  insect's 
wings,  of  that  human  body  in  which  Michel  Angelo  found 
God  as  nowhere  else  revealed,  and  the  human  face  which  ar- 
tists love,  and  which  young  men  can  hardly  look  upon  and 
live.  And  still  how  few  of  all  the  many  things  which  fill  the 
continent  of  Time  have  I  yet  named  !  The  stars  are  in  it, 
more  than  a  hundred  millions  of  them  every  pleasant  night ; 
the  seasons'  various  round ;  the  morning  and  the  evening's 
splendors  of  the  rising  and  the  setting  sun  ;  the  mountains 
and  the  sea;  the  magnificence  of  the  lightning  and  aurora; 
and  the  glorious  hurly-burly  of  the  storm. 

"  I  saw  the  beauty  of  the  world 
Before  me  hke  a  flag  unfurled  ; 
The  splendor  of  the  morning"  sky, 
And  all  the  stars  in  company. 
I  thought,  How  wonderful  it  is  ! 
My  soul  said,  '  There  is  more  than  this  ! '  " 

And  there  is  more,  even  the  soul  itself. 

"  Thou  gazest  on  the  stars,  my  soul ; 
Oh,  would  that  I  could  be 
Yon  starry  skies  with  thousand  eyes, 
That  I  might  gaze  on  thee." 

That  would  be  to  see  something  much  more  wonderful, 
much  more  beautiful,  much  more  enduring,  than  the  stars. 
And  Time  is  full  of  soul,  full  of  its  thought,  its  purpose,  and 
its  love.  And  it  is  full  of  God.  Oh,  the  depth  of  the 
riches  both  of  the  wisdom  and  knowledge  of  God  !  How 
unsearchable  are  his  judgments,  and  his  ways  past  finding 
out.  For  of  him  and  through  him  and  to  him  are  all  things, 
to  whom  be  the  glory  forever ! 

We  hear  it  said  that  time  will  stanch  the  wounds  and 
heal  the  sickness  of  our  hearts.    But  time  is  nothing  of  itself. 


The  Fullness  of  Time.  75 

It  never  healed  a  baby's  finger  of  its  slightest  hurt.  But 
it  is  full  of  healing  things,  of  cooling  draughts  for  fevered 
hearts  and  brains,  of  balsams  for  our  aches  and  miseries,  of 
poppy  and  mandragora  to  medicine  us  to  that  sweet  sleep 
which  we  owed  yesterday,  and  of  more  drastic  remedies  to 
chase  us  of  our  shame  and  sin.  It  is  full  of  nature,  it  is  full 
of  humanity,  it  is  full  of  the  divine  beneficence,  the  eternal 
goodness,  new  every  morning,  fresh  every  evening,  and  min- 
istering wdth  unfailing  bounty  to  our  bodies  and  our  minds ; 
to  our  hearts,  our  consciences,  our  souls. 

And  how  do  these  considerations  appeal  to  us  individ- 
ually, just  starting  in  upon  another  year  .?  Is  it  merely  as  a 
picture  and  a  pageant,  for  the  moment  titillating  our  emotion, 
and  then  like  the  picture  of  the  stereopticon  that  has  faded 
from  the  screen  t  It  may  be  so.  It  ought  not  to  be  so. 
This  fullness  of  time  ought  to  be  a  summons  to  us,  a  com- 
mand, an  inspiration,  to  fill  ourselves  also  with  the  fullness  of 
God ;  to  see  to  it  that  the  fullness  of  the  centuries  and  of  the 
current  time  does  not  shame  our  emptiness  of  thought  and 
deed.  "  The  universe  came  into  existence  for  Tess,"  says  her 
biographer,  "  on  the  day  when  she  was  born."  But  for  the  most 
of  us  it  is  only  a  little  bit  of  it  that  comes  into  existence  when 
we  are  born,  and  then  a  little  more  from  time  to  time  ;  as  much 
as  we  can  appropriate.  "  I  can  see  nothing  on  the  outside," 
said  Thoreau,  in  his  last  illness,  pressing  a  weary  forehead  to 
the  window-pane.  There  are  those  who  can  never  see  any- 
thing, or  much  of  anything,  on  the  outside ;  nor  on  the  inside, 
either,  for  that  matter.  Their  life  is  vacancy ;  and  the  full- 
ness of  time  and  the  munificence  of  nature  and  of  God  are  for 
them  as  if  they  were  not.  It  is  sad  and  bad  for  those  with 
whom  these  things  are  so.  They  are  like  those  who,  off  the 
coast  of  South  America,  cried  piteously  for  water  to  a  pass- 
ing vessel,  and  the  answer  came  back  to  them  :  "  Dip  it  up  ! 
Dip  it  up !  "  for  they  were  in  that  multitude  of  waters  with 
which  the  Amazon  freshens  the  tides  of  the  Atlantic  for  a 
hundred  eastward  miles.  So  there  are  those  who  die  of  thirst 
when  all  around  them  are  the  waters  of  that  river  of  Time, 


jG  The  Fullness  of  TUne. 

to  whose  eternal  fullness  the  Amazon  is  but  a  silver  thread, 
the  plaything  of  a  child. 

But  it  may  be  the  vastness  of  this  river  over  against  the 
individual  life  makes  the  latter  seem  too  insignificant  to  be 
of  much  account  one  way  or  the  other.  If  so,  remember  that 
the  Amazon  and  the  Atlantic  are  but  aggregations  of  so 
many  individual  drops  of  water,  and  that  more  than  any 
actions  of  the  greatest  men  these  —  also  merely  individ- 
uals—  are  the  actions  of  the  countless  unremembered  dead. 
The  best  of  history  has  been  made  up  of  the  contributions  of 
men  and  women  who  have  left  no  memorial.  There  is  no 
discharge  in  this  war.  England,  America,  Humanity,  God, 
expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty,  every  woman,  every 
child. 

The  New  Year  comes  bringing  a  thousand  and  ten  thou- 
sand possibilities  of  good  and  better,  and  of  bad  and  worse. 
What  shall  it  bring  to  us  ?  The  parable  has  never  been 
more  aptly  spoken  than  in  those  words  of  Emerson  with 
which  I  welcomed  you  this  morning,  and  to  which  I  will  now 
return  :  — 

*'  Daughters  of  Time,  the  hypocritic  Days, 
Muffled  and  dumb  like  barefoot  dervishes, 
And  marching  single  in  an  endless  file, 
Bring  diadems  and  fagots  in  their  hands. 
To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, — 
Bread,  kingdoms,  stars,  and  sky  that  holds  them  all. 
I,  in  my  pleached  garden,  watched  the  pomp. 
Forgot  my  morning  wishes,  hastily 
Took  a  few  herbs  and  apples,  and  the  Day 
Turned  and  departed  silent.     I,  too  late, 
Under  her  solemn  fillet  saw  the  scorn." 

God  grant  that  ours  may  be  the  wiser  choice  which  wins 
from  each  fair  Day,  as  she  departs  to  come  no  more  again,  a 
happy  and  approving  smile  ! 


THE  UNBRIDLED  TONGUE. 


Though  I  have  often  quoted  the  advice  of  Channing  to  a 
young  minister,  "  Never  preach  on  any  but  great  subjects," 
I  have  never  accepted  it  entirely  for  myself.  But,  even  if 
I  had  done  so,  I  should  not  feel  that  I  had  violated  it  this 
morning  in  choosing  for  my  subject  "The  Unbridled 
Tongue."  I  know  that  in  simple  truth,  as  in  the  language 
of  St.  James,  the  tongue  is  a  little  member.  But  a  little 
thing  may  furnish  a  great  subject.  An  atom  is  a  very  little 
thing,  much  smaller  than  the  tongue.  There  are,  as  you 
well  know,  millions  of  atoms  in  the  minimum  visible  of  the 
microscope,  in  the  smallest  area  the  microscope  can  take  into 
its  field.  But,  if  you  imagine  that  the  atom  is  a  small  sub- 
ject, you  should  read  Dalton's  "  Atomic  Theory,"  or  Clerk 
Maxwell  on  the  same  subject,  or  any  one  of  the  greater 
books  with  which  Dalton  has  been  followed  up. 

You  may  be  sure  that  Bishop  Butler  never  chose  a  subject 
that  he  did  not  think  was  great ;  and  in  his  only  volume  of 
sermons,  one  of  the  most  precious,  if  not  chc  most  precious, 
in  the  English  language,  he  has  a  sermon  on  "  The  Govern- 
ment of  the  Tongue."  I  suppose  thousands  of  sermons  have 
been  preached  on  this  subject,  some  of  them  furnishing  apt 
and  striking  illustrations  of  the  sin  which  they  deplored. 
When  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  asked  his  chaplain  who  would 
preach  the  next  day,  the  chaplain  answered,  "The  Bishop  of 
St.  Asaph  in  the  morning  and  Dr.  South  in  the  afternoon," 
which  meant  that  he  would  read  the  sermons  of  those  excel- 
lent divines,  it  being  his  custom  always  to  read  the  sermons 
of  his  betters,  as  many  preachers  since  his  time  have  done. 
I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  I  should  not  have  done  well  to 
avail  myself  of  this  custom  for   today  at  least;  and   then 


78  The   Unbridled  Tongue. 

Bishop  Butler  would  have  been  your  preacher,  and  the  ser- 
mon would  have  been  a  better  one  than  I  can  ever  hope  to 
preach.  I  have  not  seriously  thought  of  doing  this ;  and,  if 
I  had,  one  thing  would  have  deterred  me.  I  have  a  parish- 
ioner who  has  never  heard  me  preach,  and  she  has  requested 
me  to  preach  on  a  certain  subject,  which  is  a  part  of  the 
general  subject  I  have  chosen  for  my  discourse  this  morning. 
This  is  going  to  be  her  sermon ;  and  in  Bishop  Butler's  there 
isn't  anything  on  that  particular  aspect  of  the  matter  on 
which  she  is  particularly  anxious  I  should  preach. 

The  Old  and  New  Testaments  and  the  Apocrypha  abound 
in  good  sayings  about  the  tongue,  its  uses  and  abuses ;  and 
the  most  of  them  are  in  that  line  of  literature  which  was 
dominant  in  Judea  for  some  three  or  four  centuries,  the  mid- 
point of  which  was  the  beginning  of  our  era.  This  was  the 
line  of  literature  called  Gnomic ;  that  is  to  say,  proverbial, 
aphoristic.  The  praise  of  wisdom  entered  so  largely  into 
it  that  the  Jewish  name  for  it  in  the  mass  was  "  Chokmah," 
—  Wisdom.  The  great  examples  of  it  in  the  Old  Testament 
are  Proverbs  and  Ecclesiastes,  in  the  Apocrypha  The  Wis- 
dom of  Solomon  and  Ecclesiasticus,  which  is  also  called 
The  Wisdom  of  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Sirach ;  while  in  the  New 
Testament  its  sole  representative  is  the  Epistle  of  James, 
which,  if  not  written  by  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus,  was 
written  by  some  one  impersonating  him.  The  teaching  of 
the  rabbis  and  the  earlier  teachings  of  Jesus  ran  very  much 
upon  this  line.  But  with  so  much  warmth  does  James  ex- 
press himself  that  it  is  hardly  to  be  doubted  that,  whoever 
he  was  and  whenever  he  wrote,  he  had  had  such  experience 
of  loose  and  evil  tongues  that  something  very  different  from 
the  calmness  of  proverbial  wisdom  got  into  and  gave  warmth 
and  color  to  his  phrase.  "Behold,"  he  says,  "how  much 
wood  is  kindled  by  how  small  a  fire  !  And  the  tongue  is  a 
fire,  a  world  of  iniquity  among  our  members,  which  defileth 
the  whole  body,  and  setteth  on  fire  the  wheel  of  our  life,  and 
is  set  on  fire  of  hell."  So  strong  his  feeling  was  about  the 
matter  that  he  declared,  "If  any  man  thinketh  himself  to 


The  Unbridled  Tongue.  79 

be  religious,  and  bridleth  not  his  tongue,  but  deceiveth  his 
own  heart,  this  man's  religion  is  vain."  It  is  from  this  pas- 
sage that  I  have  taken  the  title  of  my  subject,  "  The  Un- 
bridled Tongue." 

Judged  by  this  standard,  a  great  deal  of  religion  would  be 
vanity,  even  where  there  is  no  deliberate  slander,  no  mali- 
cious misrepresentation,  no  wilful  lying  or  bearing  of  false 
witness  with  a  view  to  furthering  our  own  selfish  ends  or 
compassing  another's  harm.  Every  community  has  enough 
of  these  things  and  to  spare.  The  secret  of  lago  did  not 
die  with  him.  Like  George  IV.,  he  was  "  the  father  of  a 
great  many  of  his  countrymen,"  and  they  intermarried  in  all 
nations,  and  their  progeny  is  as  the  stars  of  heaven  for 
multitude.  But  these  things,  however  common,  are  not  the 
faults  of  the  unbridled  tongue.  The  slanderer,  the  back- 
biter, the  false  witness,  rides  no  runaway  beast.  With  one 
firm  hand  upon  the  rein,  he  with  the  other  drives  his  levelled 
spear  straight  for  some  open  joint,  and  bears  his  adversary 
down ;  no  mimic  tourney  his,  but  murderous  intent,  and  he 
is  happiest  when  he  can  come  upon  his  victim  from  behind 
and  deal  an  unsuspected  blow.  Such  wickedness  is  not  un- 
common, and  every  day  men  as  big-hearted  as  Othello, 
women  of  Desdemona's  purity,  are  subject  to  its  stress ; 
statesmen  are  blighted  by  its  curse  ;  and  humble  village-folk, 
whose  good  name  equally  with  the  loftiest  is  the  immediate 
jewel  of  their  souls,  discover  that  it  has  been  filched  by 
some  malicious  neighbor,  and  not  enriching  him  has,  in  its 
going,  left  them  poor  indeed.  But  these  are  not  the  trage- 
dies of  the  unbridled  tongue.  It  would  have  been  superfluous 
for  James  to  say  that  the  deliberate  slanderer  or  perjurer, 
however  he  might  think  himself  to  be  religious,  was  not  so. 
He  could  not  think  himself  to  be  so,  unless  religion  and  mo- 
rality were  as  completely  severed  in  his  thought  as  in  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini's,  whose  prayers  and  homicides  and  adul- 
teries were  a  happy  family,  a  society  for  mutual  admiration. 
If  many  thousands  have  not  so  dissevered  their  morality  and 
religion,  it  is  not  because  the  preachers  have  not  given  them 


8o  TJie   Unbridled  Touzue. 


^> 


license  to  do  so  with  their  doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith 
alone  and  their  contempt  for  the  good  works  of  morality  as 
filthy  rags. 

But,  in  setting  forth  the  dangers  and  the  miseries  of  the 
unbridled  tongue,  I  shall  not  feel  obliged  to  confine  myself 
rigorously  to  those  that  were  uppermost  or  exclusively  in  the 
mind  of  the  New  Testament  writer.  Evidently,  he  was  think- 
ing almost,  or  quite  entirely,  of  that  talkativeness  which  the 
rough  humor  of  our  popular  speech,  that  often  goes  straight 
to  its  mark,  where  that  of  our  professional  humorists  fumbles 
in  the  dark,  calls  "  talking  with  the  mouth,"  meaning  to 
imply  a  certain  disconnection  between  the  mouth  and  the 
mind,  the  tongue  and  the  brain.  There  is  much  of  this,  a 
disposition  to  be  talking  abstracted  from  the  consideration 
of  what  is  to  be  said,  with  very  little  or  no  regard  or 
thought  of  doing  either  good  or  harm.  This  "  determination 
of  words  to  the  mouth  "  is  equally  the  curse  of  our  conven- 
tional "society"  and  the  country-call  or  parish  sewing-meet- 
ing, which  has  been  the  butt  of  so  much  cruel  sarcasm  and 
contempt.  We  read  in  the  Apocalypse  that  upon  one  occa- 
sion there  was  silence  in  heaven  for  the  space  of  half  an 
hour;  but  that  would  not  have  happened  if  one  of  these  talk- 
ative persons,  whom  we  are  now  considering,  had  been  pres- 
ent. To  such  a  one  "  a  dead  pause  "  in  the  conversation  is 
of  all  things  the  most  dreadful,  corpse-like  thing ;  and  he  pro- 
ceeds to  bury  it  under  a  heap  of  words,  indifferent  to  their 
quality,  if,  happily,  they  serve  the  end  in  view.  There  are 
some  sentences  of  Bishop  Butler  on  this  head  that  are  so 
good  that  I  cannot  find  it  in  my  heart  to  substitute  for  them 
my  own  poorer  stuff.  "The  wise  man  observes,"  he  says, 
^'' that  there  is  a  time  to  speak  and  a  time  to  keep  silence.  One 
meets  with  people  in  the  world  who  seem  never  to  have 
made  the  last  of  these  observations.  And  yet  these  great 
talkers  do  not  at  all  speak  from  their  having  anything  to  say, 
as  every  sentence  shows,  but  only  from  their  inclination  to 
be  talking.  Their  conversation  is  merely  an  exercise  of  the 
tongue ;    no    other   human    faculty   has    any    share    in    it." 


The   Unbridled  To7io-ne.  8 1 


<b 


^^Oh  that  you  ivoidd  altogether  hold  your  peace^^  he  quotes  from 
Job  j  "  and  it  should  be  your  wisdomJ'  "  Remember  likewise," 
he  says,  "  that  there  are  persons  who  love  fewer  words,  an 
inoffensive  sort  of  people,  and  who  deserve  some  regard, 
though  of  too  still  and  composed  tempers  for  you.  Of  this 
number  was  the  Son  of  Sirach  ;  for  he  plainly  speaks  from 
experience  when  he  says,  ^As  hills  of  sand  are  to  the  steps  of 
the  aged,  so  is  one  of  many  words  to  a  quiet  maji.^  ...  It  is  in- 
deed a  very  unhappy  way  these  people  are  in  :  they  in  a 
manner  cut  themselves  out  from  all  advantages  of  conversa- 
tion, except  that  of  being  entertained  by  their  own  talk.  .  .  . 
But,  if  we  consider  conversation  as  an  entertainment,  as 
somewhat  to  unbend  the  mind,  as  a  diversion  from  the  cares, 
the  business,  the  sorrows  of  life,  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of 
it  that  the  discourse  be  mutual.  .  .  .  Attention  to  the  contin- 
ued discourse  of  one  alone  grows  more  painful  often  than 
the  cares  and  business  we  come  to  be  diverted  from," 

It  does  not  seem  to  me,  however,  that  in  these  considera- 
tions, and  those  additional  to  them  in  the  discourse  of  the 
good  bishop,  there  is  enough  allowance  made  for  a  certain 
nervous  volubility, —  an  affection  which  is  not  uncommon, 
and  which  afflicts  the  most  timid  and  retiring  people  to  a 
pre-eminent  degree.  It  is  their  device  to  save  themselves 
from  the  horrors  of  self-consciousness.  They  wrap  them- 
selves in  w^ords  to  hide  the  nakedness  of  their  individual 
personality  from  the  common  view.  They  rattle  on  as  if 
a  moment's  pause  would  be  the  signal  for  them  to  be  turned 
loose,  like  Godiva  in  the  story,  without  any  banishment  of 
vulgar  gazers  from  the  streets,  and  wdthout  the  glory  of  her 
hair.  It  is  very  certain  that  there  are  such  people,  and  that 
they  call  for  pity  rather  than  for  blame.  Their  case  is  very 
different  from  that  of  those  who  talk  and  talk  because  they 
must  be  attracting  attention  to  themselves,  or  they  are 
miserable. 

If  even  such  a  habit  as  that  of  these  persons  ended  with 
itself,  it  would  not  deserve  the  stern  disapprobation  of  the 
New  Testament  writer  nor  the  serious  attention  I  am  giving 


82  The   Unbridled  Tonsrnc 


<b 


to  it  here.  But  it  does  not  end  in  itself.  When  a?tything 
7'-ather  thaft  silence  is  the  rule,  the  stream  of  talk  cannot  very 
long  run  clear  of  any  but  the  most  trivial  or  indifferent 
matters.  It  will  very  soon  drag  in  the  gossip  of  the  town, 
the  personal  affairs  and  characters  of  neighbors,  relatives, 
and  friends,  the  secrets  that  have  been  intrusted  to  us,  and 
our  own  that  we  had  better  keep.  The  dread  of  being  dull 
and  tame  is  whip  and  spur  to  the  unbridled  tongue  ;  and  so 
the  plain  fact  is  decorated  and  distorted  until  its  original 
semblance  is  entirely  gone.  Mythology  is  no  ancient  busi- 
ness altogether.  It  is  as  alive  and  rampant  in  our  own 
time  as  in  any  period  of  the  past.  But,  alas !  it  not  only 
idealizes  men  and  women  up,  but  also  down,  and  this  much 
oftener  than  the  other!  It  often  seems  to  us,  where  we 
know  the  truth  concerning  this  or  that  social  matter,  and  are 
confronted  by  some  image  of  it  as  distorted  and  colossal  as 
the  spectre  of  the  Brocken  in  comparison  with  the  traveller 
projecting  it,  that  some  one  in  the  transformation  scene 
must  have  done  some  lying  of  the  tallest  kind.  But  it  is 
not  necessary  to  suppose  this.  It  is  only  necessary  to  sup- 
pose that  one  here  and  another  there  has  improved  a  little 

—  a  very  little  —  on  the  story  as  it  came  to  him  ;  this  quite 
unconsciously.  "  Keep  the  ball  a-rolling  !"  cried  the  polili- 
cal  enthusiasts ;  and,  from  a  snow-ball  that  a  boy  could 
throw,  it  became  a  bulk  to  crush  a  man.  "  Keep  the  ball 
a-rolling ! "  cry  the  unbridled  talkers,  and,  from  a  mere 
nothing  to  begin  with,  their  snow-ball  gathers  various  dirt, 
as  if  it  were  rolled  along  the  car-tracks  of  our  city  as  they 
have  been  of  late,  until  at  length  some  man,  and  oftener 
some  woman,  is  crushed  to  death  —  socially,  if  not  morally 

—  under  the  monstrous  weight  of  the  accumulated  bulk  of 
mere   infinitesimal  exaggerations. 

Better,  perhaps  you  think,  a  briefer  diagnosis  of  this 
miserable  disease,  and  some  remedial  suggestions.  But  it 
ought  to  be  a  remedial  suggestion  to  look  upon  the  matter 
honestly  and  see  it  as  it  is.  The  danger  is  never  greater 
than  when  the  public  mind  is  generally  engrossed  with  some 


The  Unbridled  Tongue.  83 

lamentable  affair  of  sexual  immorality.  Then  all  the  ordi- 
nary barriers  of  discretion  and  reserve  are  broken  down  and 
children  young  and  old  are  caught  in  the  melee  and  trodden 
underfoot  and  crushed  into  the  mire  of  talk  that  cannot 
touch  them  but  to  stain.  Then  the  anxiety  to  maintain  our 
side,  whichever  it  may  be,  drives  us  to  wilful  blindness  of 
the  things  we  do  not  wish  to  see  and  to  gross  exaggeration 
of  the  things  we  actually  know.  To  look  on  on  such  a  field 
and  fray  ought  to  be  the  best  possible  corrective  for  the 
habit  of  unbridled  speech.  But,  in  truth,  we  cannot  trust  to 
any  such  specific  for  the  remedy  of  an  evil  that  is  so  per- 
sistent and  so  epidemic.  There  will  always  be  unbridled 
tongues  where  the  narrowness  of  culture  and  the  perversity' 
of  taste  compel  absorption  in  the  petty  round  of  personal 
affairs.  Do  not  imagine  that  I  am  pleading  for  the  conver- 
sion of  our  social  intercourse  into  a  solemn  and  majestical 
occasion  for  the  discussion  of  the  most  fundamental  prob- 
lems that  affect,  but  not  too  obviously,  our  mortal  life.  When 
I  am  taking  mine  ease  in  my  inn  or  looking  out  lazily  upon 
the  western  hills,  I  inwardly  resent  the  conduct  of  a  friend 
who  proposes  to  discuss  with  me  the  foundations  of  the 
universe, —  whether  or  not  they  are  entirely  sound.  Enough 
for  me,  just  then,  that  the  chair  I  sit  in  has  a  comfortable 
seat  and  four  serviceable  legs.  The  foundations  of  the  uni- 
verse must  wait  for  some  more  convenient  season  to  be 
tried.  But  there  are  times  when  it  is  good  to  brace  our- 
selves against  a  friend  in  manly  struggle  over  some  problem 
of  the  outward  universe  or  the  inner  life  ;  and,  for  the  rest, 
our  talk  is  not  shut  up  to  the  alternatives  of  the  most 
weighty  and  the  most  frivolous  matters.  The  best  defence 
against  the  trivialities  of  social  talk,  that  soon  run  out  into 
the  slush  of  gossip  and  the  mire  of  scandal-mongering  and  the 
like,  is  a  well-trained,  well-ordered  mind,  —  a  mind,  a  memory, 
full  of  the  good  things  of  literature  and  art  and  song.  It  is 
the  vacant  mind  that  is  the  devil's  work-shop  in  this  business. 
Those  who  are  conversant  with  the  best  books  or  even  with 
the  ephemeral  products  of  the  time,  those  who  love  music, 


84  The   Unbridled  Tongue. 

pictures,  who  are  engaged  in  public  enterprises  of  great 
pith  and  moment,  if  now  and  then  they  are  surprised  into 
unbridled  speech,  have  in  their  general  course  a  security 
against  it  for  which  they  cannot  be  too  glad. 

But,  though  this  aspect  of  my  theme  invites  to  fuller  illus- 
tration, I  must  break  away  from  it  into  another,  that  de- 
scribed by  John  Henry  Newman  in  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able and  impressive  sermons  that  he  ever  preached  as  "  un- 
real talk."  There  is  plenty  of  such  talk.  The  words  get 
away  from  the  meaning  sometimes,  like  a  horse  that  has  got 
away  from  the  wagon.  We  wreck  ourselves  upon  expres- 
sion ;  and,  forgetting  that  w^ords  are  the  counters  of  wise  men, 
the  money  of  fools,  we  heap  them  up  as  if,  knowing  them  to 
be  but  copper  coin,  we  could  make  payment  with  them  for 
honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends.  Consider  the 
effusiveness  of  social  protestation, —  women  who  do  not  care 
a  nickel  for  each  other  falling  into  each  other's  arms  with 
mutual  kisses,  as  if  that  currency  could  be  debased  to  any 
extent  and  still  keep  its  value  in  the  exchanges  of  all  loving 
hearts.  To  shape  the  phrase  upon  the  thing  is  required  of 
the  true  poet.  But  life  is  more  than  poetry ;  and  every  man 
should  be  of  Milton's  temper  when  he  determined  that  his 
own  life  should  be  a  true  poem,  a  mystic,  unfathomable 
song.  To  this  end  we  should  shape  our  words  upon  our 
feelings,  our  convictions,  our  emotions,  and  have  done  with 
that  effusiveness,  that  "gush," — how  often  are  the  common 
words  the  best ! — which  is  not  only  false  and  lying  in  its  im- 
mediate character,  but  futile  for  the  deceit  which  it  intends, 
while  it  reacts  upon  the  mind  and  character  of  the  purveyor 
with  deleterious  and  disintegrating  force.  In  our  social 
amenities,  in  our  aesthetic  admirations,  and  in  our  emotional 
religiousness,  let  us  cultivate  that  habit  of  understatement 
which  Emerson  so  dearly  loved.  The  Old  Testament  com- 
mand, "Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of  the  Lord  thy  God 
in  vain,"  was  not,  I  believe,  so  much  a  command  against 
what  we  call  profane  swearing  as  against  too  lightly  taking 
the  name  of  the  Eternal  on  the  lips ;  and  Jewish  custom  went 


The  Unbridled  Tongue.  85 

so  far  in  its  obedience  to  this  interpretation  that  the  name  of 
the  Jewish  God  became  "the  ineffable  name,"  a  name  not 
to  be  spoken,  and  how  it  should  be  spoken  ceased  to  be  a 
matter  of  knowledge  among  men,  the  vowels  of  the  name 
Jehovah  being  supplied  from  some  other  designation  of  the 
Almighty.  This  was  a  foolish  business  no  doubt ;  but  was  it 
not  a  more  commendable  extreme  than  that  which  is  so 
common  in  our  modern  world, —  a  free  and  easy  use  of  the 
great  name  once  ineffable,  or  some  corresponding  name,  that 
cheapens  it  for  the  imagination  and  the  heart ;  a  use  much 
oftener  rhetorical  than  it  is  religious. 

And  these  considerations  bring  me  to  that  part  of  my  sub- 
ject which  has  been  particularly  assigned  to  me  by  my  re- 
mote parishioner,  who  is  sorely  troubled  by  the  habit  of  pro- 
fanity as  practised  generally  about  her,  and  particularly  by 
those  in  whom  her  personal  interest  is  very  great.  This  is 
another  habit  of  the  unbridled  tongue.  Not  that  all  pro" 
fanity  comes  under  this  head.  Men  have  been  known  to 
swear  with  great  deliberation ;  unable,  they  imagined,  to 
secure  in  any  other  way  the  emphasis  they  wished,  and  felt 
that  they  must  have,  for  what  they  had  to  say.  Of  these  was 
Wendell  Phillips,  when,  telling  how  a  fugitive  slave  had  been 
treated  in  his  own  State  and  city,  he  substituted  another  word 
for  "save  "  in  the  majestic  formula,  "God  save  the  Common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts  !  "  A  friend  assures  me  that  we 
have  cursing,  and  not  swearing,  here,  and  also  in  Governor 
Flower's  expression  of  indifference  to  the  votes,  and  in  the 
emphatic  refusal  of  the  President-elect  to  give  any  pledges 
in  advance  of  his  election  to  the  Tammany  Ring.  Such  nice 
distinctions  I  cannot  consider  here,  nor  the  morality  of  such 
ebullitions  of  men  generally  self-controlled  as  that  of  Wash- 
ington at  Monmouth,  when  with  "the  sword  of  his  mouth" 
he  clove  in  twain  that  rascally  and  traitorous  adventurer. 
General  Charles  Lee.  The  habit  of  profanity  is  a  habit  of 
the  unbridled  tongue.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  altogether 
motiveless.  Unbridled  speech  is  seldom  merely  for  the  love 
of  talking.     It  is  also  for  the  love  of  being  heard ;  of  being 


S6  2he  Unbridled  Tonsrue 


'i:i 


an  object,  and  the  object,  of  attention  for  the  time  being. 
There  are  men  and  women,  and  especially  young  people, 
many  of  whom  get  over  it,  the  tenure  of  whose  existence  is 
to  their  imagination  the  social  consciousness  that  they  are  on 
the  scene.  The  habit  of  profanity  is  nourished  by  the  same 
shallow  source,  which,  although  it  is  so  shallow,  never  yet 
ran  dry.  It  is  nourished  also  by  the  desire  and  passion  to 
seem  bright  and  smart,  which  are  peculiarly  an  affection  of 
those  who  are  not  so  ;  and,  then,  sometimes  we  have  not  only 
an  unbridled  tongue,  but,  as  it  were,  the  reins  are  thrown  upon 
its  back  and  the  whip  is  laid  on,  and  the  driving  is  like  that 
of  Jehu  in  the  day  of  battle.  The  worst  example  in  this  kind 
I  ever  knew  was  a  young  man  in  Harvard  College,  the 
variety  and  ingenuity  of  whose  profanity  would  have  been  in- 
comprehensible if  his  father  had  not  been  the  rector  of  the 
Church  of  the  Advent  in  Boston,  then  of  all  High  Churches 
in  the  land  the  very  highest.  For  it  is  noticeable  that,  with 
the  decrease  in  the  number  of  things  conventionally  sacred, 
the  range  of  the  vocabulary  of  profanity  is  curtailed.  We 
never  hear  in  Protestant  communities  those  curious  profani- 
ties with  which  Shakspere's  heroes  swear :  "  Byrlakin,"  for 
example, —  /.«?,  "by  our  ladykin,"  our  little  lady,  the  Virgin  ; 
and  "  Odsbodikins,"  —  i.e.,  "By  God's  little  body,"  the  tran- 
substantiated eucharistic  bread. 

It  is  evident  that  any  judgment  of  profanity,  any  criticism 
and  condemnation  of  it  from  the  standpoint  of  rational  re- 
ligion, must  be  widely  different  from  the  judgment,  criticism, 
condemnation,  of  it  that  pertain  to  the  traditional  standpoint. 
I  remember  well  that  in  my  boyhood  I  heard  a  sermon  in 
which  profanity  was  held  up  as  worse  than  theft  or  murder 
or  adultery.  "  For  does  it  not,"  asked  the  impassioned 
preacher,  "  take  precedence  in  the  decalogue  of  the  com- 
mands against  those  things  ?  "  It  does  come  before  them  in 
the  order  of  the  commandments,  but  that  this  implies  prece- 
dence in  the  degree  of  its  importance  there  is  no  sufficient 
proof.  The  same  evidence  would  make  keeping  the  Sab- 
bath holy  of  more  importance  than  the  moral  virtues  which 


The  Unbridled  Tongue.  8y 

the  later  clauses  of  the  decalogue  prescribe.  When  I  was  in 
Charleston,  5.C.,  in  1865,  I  remember  that  in  old  St. 
Michael's  Church  a  shot  or  shell  had  gone  through  a  wooden 
tablet  in  the  chancel,  on  which  the  Ten  Commandments  had 
been  written,  and  had  broken  all  of  those  relating  to  men's 
moral  duties,  while  leaving  quite  intact  those  setting  forth 
their  duties  to  God ;  and  I  remarked  that  those  which  had 
been  broken  were  those  for  which  our  Southern  brethren  had 
cared  the  least.  That  was  because  theirs  was  a  primitive 
society,  and  in  every  primitive  society  the  duties  of  worship 
antedate  and  overtop  the  duties  of  the  social  order.  Even, 
then,  if  the  commandment,  "Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name 
of  the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain,"  did  not  refer  to  the  careless 
use  of  the  Divine  Name  rather  than  to  what  we  call  profan- 
ity, no  precedence  given  to  it  in  the  Old  Testament  would 
as  such  avail  for  us.  But,  this  being  so,  it  does  not  follow 
that  this  habit  of  the  unbridled  tongue  is  one  to  which  we 
can  afford  to  be  indifferent,  or  which  we  can  dismiss  as 
merely  vulgar,  silly,  and  inane.  It  is  all  of  these.  How 
intensely  vulgar,  how  profoundly  silly  and  inane,  one  can 
discover  anywhere  where  young  men  are  loafing  round.  Let 
young  men  who  do  not  wish  to  be  vulgar,  who  do  not  wish 
to  be  silly  and  inane,  set  a  watch  at  the  door  of  their  lips. 
Our  golden  youth  sink  to  the  level  of  the  loafers  of  the 
slums,  when  they  permit  themselves  their  desecration  of  the 
use  of  sacred  names.  But  here,  again,  the  negative  prohibi- 
tion must  be  re-enforced  by  positive  helps.  "  Out  of  the 
abundance  of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh,"  says  the  prov- 
erb ;  but  in  this  business  of  profanity  the  mouth  speaketh, 
for  the  most  part,  out  of  the  emptiness  of  the  head.  And 
it  is  because  our  golden  youth  are  oftentimes  as  empty- 
headed  as  the  youth  who  are  at  the  furthest  possible  social 
remove  from  them  that  they  emulate  their  smartness  in  this 
vulgar  style.  Knowledge,  culture,  intelligence,  reading, 
something  sound  and  sweet  and  good  to  think  about  and 
talk  about, —  these  are  the  prophylactics  that  will  make  the 
habit  of   profanity  as   impossible  for  the  youth  or  man  as 


88  The   Unbridled  Tonsrnc 


'i> 


stealing  for  the  honest  laborer  or  impurity  for  a  consecrated 
wife,  and  that  will  kill  out  the  habit  where  it  has  been  con- 
tracted, as  a  good  strong  grass  kills  out  the  farmer's  weeds. 
But  for  the  bridling  of  the  tongue  on  this  particular  course 
I  must  not  forego  what  of  deterrent  force  there  is  in  the 
more  serious  conviction  of  all  earnest  minds,  that  the  wicked- 
ness of  profanity  is  no  matter  of  the  past,  because  that 
wickedness  does  not  consist  for  us  in  disobedience  to  any 
positive  command  of  God  himself.  There  is  an  essay  by 
George  Eliot,  called  "  Debasing  the  Moral  Currency,"  which, 
I  imagine,  is  extremely  pertinent  to  the  matter  now  in  hand. 
"This,"  she  says,  "is  what  I  call  debasing  the  moral  cur- 
rency, lowering  the  value  of  every  inspiring  fact  and  tradition, 
so  that  it  will  command  less  and  less  of  the  spiritual  prod- 
ucts, the  generous  motives,  which  sustain  the  charm  and 
elevation  of  our  social  existence,  the  something  besides 
bread  by  which  man  saves  his  soul  alive."  Her  application 
of  this  standard  is  entirely  to  the  miserable  buffoonery  of 
parody  and  burlesque ;  a  fiend,  she  calls  it,  "which  with  lewd 
grin  and  clumsy  hoof  is  breathing  a  moral  mildew  over  the 
harvest  of  our  human  sentiments."  I  commend  that  essay 
to  each  one  of  you ;  for  there  is  great  need  of  the  doctrine 
that  it  preaches  and  the  warning  that  it  sounds  in  this  our 
time,  when  even  that  good  taste  which  generally  controls 
the  columns  of  the  New  York  Tribune  can  nod  so  sleepily 
that  a  parody  can  get  in  on  Mrs.  Howe's  noble  and  sacred 
"  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic," —  a  parody  substituting 
"  Hill  "  for  "  God  "  in  the  refrain  "  For  God  is  marching  on." 
But  what  has  this  "debasement  of  the  moral  currency"  to 
do  with  the  habit  of  profanity,  and  the  wickedness  of  that 
habit?  Much  everyway.  This,  too,  is  a  debasement  of  the 
moral  currency  as  much  more  injurious  than  the  habit  of 
buffoonery  and  burlesque  as  it  is  more  common.  We  can- 
not take  in  vain  the  name  of  any  person  or  thing  that  is 
most  sacred  in  men's  thought  and  feeling  without  depress- 
ing the  moral  and  spiritual  value  of  that  person  or  thing. 
And,  moreover,  we  are  in  honor  bound  to  reverence  others' 


The   Unbridled  Tongue.  89 

reverence,  or,  if  not  to  reverence  it,  to  respect  it,  and  to  treat 
it  decently.  We  cannot  bandy  names  that  stand  with  other 
people  for  great  spiritual  realities,  as  if  they  were  but  sticks 
and  stones,  without  lowering  our  own  spiritual  temper.  If 
we  must  swear,  let  it  by  all  means  be  by  the  gods  that  we 
pretend  to  reverence  and  serve,  and  not  by  other  men's. 

You  will  see,  therefore,  that,  in  speaking  of  the  wickedness 
of  profanity,  I  have  not  used  a  word  which  exceeds  in  any 
least  degree  my  sincere  and  full  conviction  in  regard  to  it. 
It  is  wicked  to  debase  the  national  currency,  to  make  coin 
that  is  a  poor  or  worthless  travesty  of  the  genuine  article. 
It  is  more  wicked  to  debase  the  moral  currency.  We  can- 
not soak  ourselves  in  habits  of  contempt  for  the  great  things 
of  literature  and  art,  and  be  "  always  reverent  in  the  right 
place,  you  know,"  as  Clarissa  put  it  to  her  friend.  And  we 
cannot  indulge  in  the  habit  of  profanity  without  losing  some- 
thing ourselves,  and  robbing  others  of  those  spiritual  reali- 
ties which  are  connoted  by  the  names  by  which  we  curse 
and  swear.  I  have  heard  the  name  of  God  so  spoken  that 
I  held  my  breath  as  if  there  might  be  a  theophany  upon  the 
spot,  a  visible  presence  of  the  Most  High.  And  the  name  of 
Jesus  ought  never  to  be  spoken  without  that  reverence  which 
belongs  only  to  the  greatest  of  mankind,  and  that  tenderness 
which  is  for  those  who  die  in  order  that  the  truth  they  love 
may  live  and  grow.  But  such  tenderness  and  reverence 
and  such  sacred  awe  cannot  be  associated  with  these  names 
where  they  are  but  the  raw  material  of  profanity,  and  where 
the  names  are  soiled  and  tarnished  and  degraded  there  is 
less  likelihood  that  the  realities  which  they  connote  will  ever 
be  a  source  of  peace  and  blessing  for  our  hearts. 

There  is  another  way  of  the  unbridled  tongue  of  which  I 
can  hardly  trust  myself  to  speak.  It  is  so  indelicate  that  to 
speak  of  it  delicately  is  almost  impossible.  It  is  the  way  of 
"  loose  talk,"  as  it  is  called,  as  if  with  conscious  reference 
to  the  New  Testament  phrase, — "and  bridleth  not  his 
tongue."  This,  too,  is  profane ;  but  what  it  profanes  is  not 
the  holiness  of  any  sacred  name,  but  the  holiness  of  sacred 


90  The   Unbridled  Tongue. 

mothers,  sisters,  daughters,  wives ;  the  holiness  of  the  asso- 
ciations which  these  names  suggest  to  every  generous  youth 
or  faithful  man.  And  the  danger  here  is  all  the  greater  be- 
cause this  talk  is  often  made  the  vehicle  of  real  wit;  and  not 
all  can  do  as  Abraham  Lincoln  did, —  hold  fast  the  wit,  and 
let  the  other  go  as  if  it  did  not  exist.  We  could  wish  that 
he  had  never  looked  for  jewels  in  these  swinish  snouts,  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  not  safe  or  wise  for  any  average 
boy  or  man  to  do  so.  His  greatness  does  not  palliate  the 
fault  which  made  his  greatness  less.  Few  boys  or  men  can 
get  into  the  way  of  liking  witty  things,  coming  in  such  a 
questionable  shape,  and  not  later  get  into  the  way  of  em- 
bracing the  foul  shape  which  they  at  first  could  scarce  en- 
dure. Why  speak  of  such  base  things  as  these  to  those  the 
atmosphere  of  whose  homes  is  of  such  purity  that  the  boy 
and  youth  can  hardly  understand  what  I  am  speaking  of  at 
all  ?  Ah  !  but  there  are  streets  as  well  as  homes  ;  and  there 
are  schools.  And,  when  I  was  at  Exeter  Academy,  were  not 
the  boys  almost  all  "  gentlemen's  sons,"  so  called  ?  and  yet 
could  any  sewer  of  the  Bowery  run  with  fouler  speech  than 
that  from  which  no  boy  could  possibly  escape,  though  he 
might  spurn  it  with  a  contemptuous  and  indignant  heel  ? 
And,  as  it  was  there,  is  it  not  generally  in  our  schools  and 
colleges  and  in  all  our  aggregations  of  young  men  t  I 
should  be  glad  to  know  that  it  is  not. 

What  are  the  remedies  for  this  intolerable  disease  ?  It 
might  help  a  little  if  the  boy  could  know  how  there  would 
come  a  time  when  he  would  be  without  so  much  as  one  re- 
membered stain ;  but  there  it  is  upon  his  memory,  and  let 
him  cry  to  it  as  often  as  he  will,  "  Out,  damned  spot !  "  it 
will  not  go  away.  It  might  also  help  a  little  if  the  boy 
should  ask  himself,  "  What  would  my  mother  or  my  sister 
think  of  this?"  But  here,  again,  there  is  no  specific  for  the 
malady.  There  must  be  a  regimen  of  good  companionship, 
and  noble  art,  and  books  the  power  of  whose  attraction 
never  lies  in  an  impure  suggestion  or  lascivious  word.  And 
I  can  imagine  anatomy  and  physiology  so  taught  that  every 


The   Unbridled  Tongue.  91 

student's  body  should  be  to  him  the  temple  of  the  Living 
God,  which  he  must  not  defile  with  so  much  as  one  doubtful 
word.  Last,  but  not  least,  is  it  not  worth  considering 
whether  the  luxurious  habits  of  our  modern  life  are  not 
inimical  to  purity  of  thought  and  deed,  whether  something 
more  frugal  and  severe  and  stoical  would  not  give  the  fibre 
of  our  youth  and  manhood  an  energy  of  resistance  against 
evil  which  it  does  not  now  possess,  a  strength  for  curbing 
passions  which  now  run  an  unbridled  course,  destroying  him 
who  boasts  the  splendid  chariot,  and  not  him  alone  ? 

Be  these  things  as  they  may,  I  have  already  said  enough, 
perhaps  too  much,  to  show  that  not  without  ample  justifica- 
tion did  the  writer,  whom  the  Christian  centuries  have 
fondly  imagined  to  be  "James,  the  brother  of  the  Lord," 
state  himself  so  earnestly  and  strongly  when  he  said,  "  If 
any  man  among  you  thinketh  himself  to  be  religious,  and 
bridleth  not  his  tongue,  but  deceiveth  his  own  heart,  that 
man's  religion  is  vain." 


IMMORTALITY. 


It  is  only  an  unsympathetic  and  unsocial  nature  that  with- 
draws itself  willingly  from  the  common  joys  and  satisfactions 
of  mankind.  The  social  and  the  sympathetic  will  try  to  find 
something  in  the  common  thought  and  feeling  with  which 
they  can  ally  themselves.  Thus,  when  this  Easter  festival 
comes  round,  those  who  cannot  find  in  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus  from  the  dead  any  argument  for  the  soul's  immortal- 
ity, nor  in  the  New  Testament  any  evidence  of  the  slightest 
weight  for  the  fact  of  such  a  resurrection,  may  still  keep  the 
feast  of  immortality  with  a  joyous  mind.  They  may  recog- 
nize that  to  many  thousands  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  not 
so  much  the  conscious  ground  of  their  belief  in  immortality 
as  it  is  a  symbol  which  many  beautiful  associations  have  en- 
deared; and,  if  they  may  not  sympathize  with  the  symbol, 
they  may  with  the  belief  for  which  it  stands.  Those  who 
cannot  do  this,  if  they  are  socially  inclined,  may  gladly  turn 
their  thoughts  into  the  same  channel  through  which  the 
common  thought  is  streaming  deep  and  wide.  The  time  in- 
vites to  thoughts  of  immortality,  whatever  they  may  be.  The 
natural  season  would  do  this,  were  it  not  re-enforced  by 
any  ecclesiastical  event.  Life  after  death  is  the  engrossing 
spectacle  of  these  April  days.  The  grass  is  getting  green, 
the  buds  are  swelling,  the  lovely  nakedness  of  the  trees  is 
being  softly  veiled,  and  soon  they  will  be  clothed  in  living 
green.  However  dull  the  understanding,  the  heart  will  fi-nd 
in  this  mysterious  transformation  a  parable  of  hope.  At 
least  the  old-time  question,  "If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live 
again  ? "  will  again  assert  itself,  and  to  the  exclusion  of  all 


94  Immortality. 

others  make  itself  heard  and  heeded  to  the  hushed  and  rev- 
erent mind. 

If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  Yes,  yes,  yes,  yes, 
the  answer  comes  at  once,  and  not  of  one  reiterative  voice, 
but  many  different  voices, —  so  many  and  so  different  that  we 
cannot  at  first  distinguish  whence  they  come  and  what  they 
are.  One  is  the  voice  of  the  Earth  Spirit.  It  proclaims  the 
resurrection  of  the  body ;  or  shall  I  say,  a  resurrection  of  the 
body?  For,  certainly,  it  is  not  that  resurrection  of  the  body, 
which  has  been  a  Christian  doctrine  for  some  eighteen  hun- 
dred years,  which  is  still  the  doctrine  of  the  Churches  in  their 
simplest  creed.  For  this  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  is  that 
our  bodies  which  are  buried  in  the  earth  shall  be  raised 
again  at  some  last  day,  limb  for  limb,  feature  for  feature, 
atom  for  atom,  as  they  are  laid  away.  But  this  doctrine  has 
at  all  times  presented  many  difficulties,  from  which,  despair- 
ing of  a  solution,  the  believer  has  taken  refuge  in  the  divine 
omnipotence.  All  things  are  possible  with  God ;  and  he  will 
see  to  it  that,  whatever  intermediate  mixture  there  has  been, 
each  shall  be  made  sure  of  his  own  in  the  great  day  of  his 
appearing.  Certainly  there  are  aspects  of  this  belief  which 
have  a  very  great  attraction  for  the  affectionate  and  longing 
heart.  We  can  imagine  no  faces  and  no  forms  that  we  would 
so  gladly  see  in  heavenly  places  as  those  our  dear  ones  wore 
when  they  were  with  us  here  on  earth ;  and  this  is  true,  not 
only  of  the  faces  radiant  with  youth  and  beauty  we  have 
known  and  miss,  but  equally  or  more  of  those  deep-lined 
with  age  and  care  and  many  sorrows, —  not  only  of  the  forms 
brimful  of  eager  life  and  sprightly  grace,  but  of  those  bent  low 
by  many  years  and  burdens,  wasted  and  marred  by  time's 
remorseless  hand.  But  such  are  the  economies  of  nature 
that  for  these  things  we  do  not  dare  to  hope.  We  do  not 
hope  for  them  in  our  most  thoughtful  hours.  In  these  we 
recognize  that  it  is  the  souls  we  see  in  faces  that  make  them 
infinitely  dear,  and  these  we  may  yet  see  less  thickly  veiled 
than  now.  We  are  so  constituted  that  we  must  compose  the 
scenery  and  personal  aspects  of  an  immortal  life  out  of  the 


! 


Immortality.  95 

material  which  our  present  life  affords.  But  the  resources 
of  the  Almighty  Love  are  not  so  limited  as  our  imagination  ; 
and,  if  another  life  shall  answer  to  our  hope,  we  can  trust  to 
that  to  clothe  it  in  such  form  and  feature  as  will  satisfy  our 
hearts. 

The  resurrection  of  the  body  of  which  we  are  assured  by 
that  same  voice  of  Science  which  forbids  the  former  hope  is 
the  reincorporation  of  its  elements  in  the  vital  order  of  the 
world.  The  minerals  and  gases  that  composed  the  bodies  of 
the  five  hundred  trillions  of  humanity  who  have  come  and 
gone  upon  the  earth,  they  have  been  taken  up  into  the  earth's 
economy  of  vegetable  and  animal  and  human  life ;  and  how 
full  of  gracious  and  poetic  implications  is  the  thought !  Now 
it  is  Omar  Khayyam  who  interprets  it  for  us ;  and  anon  it  is 
our  own  high-hearted  Lowell,  lover  of  all  nature  and  human- 
ity with  a  great  and  equal  love.     The  Persian  sang  :  — 

"  I  sometimes  think  that  never  blows  so  red 
The  rose  as  where  some  buried  Caesar  bled, 

That  every  hyacinth  the  garden  wears 
Dropt  in  her  lap  from  some  once  lovely  head. 

"  And  this  reviving  herb  whose  tender  green 
Fledges  the  river-lip  on  which  we  lean, — 

Ah !  lean  upon  it  lightly !  for  who  knows 
From  what  once  lovely  lip  it  springs  unseen !  " 

Less  fanciful  and  of  a  surer  essence  is  the  modern  song :  — 

"  Could  we  be  conscious  but  as  dreamers  be, 
'Twere  sweet  to  leave  this  shifting  life  of  tents 
Sunk  in  the  changeless  calm  of  Deity  ; 
Nay !  to  be  mingled  with  the  elements. 
The  fellow-servant  of  creative  powers, 
Partaker  in  the  solemn  years'  events, 
To  share  the  work  of  busy-fingeied  hours, 
To  be  night's  silent  almoner  of  dew, 
To  rise  again  in  plants  and  breathe  and  grow, 
To  stream  as  tides  the  ocean  caverns  through, 
Or  with  the  rapture  of  great  winds  to  blow 
About  earth's  shaken  coignes,  were  not  a  fate 
To  leave  us  all  disconsolate." 


96  Immortality. 

No,  indeed,  it  were  not,  if  the  body's  fate  were  all.  How 
could  we  ask  for  it  a  better  resurrection  ?  What  stuff  that 
•saints  and  heroes  have  been  made  of  animates  our  dust! 
What  various  parts  this  in  its  turn  shall  play, —  brown  in  the 
rsunburnt  sod,  bright  in  the  multitudinous  laughter  of  the  sea, 
Ted  ill  the  rose's  heart,  dancing  along  the  veins  of  youth  and 
•raaid  for  centuries  to  come  !  How  strange  it  is  that  some 
will  be  at  pains  to  frustrate  or  retard  this  genial  process  of 
the  world!  that  they  will  try  by  various  artifice  to  hold  the 
•soulless  body  back  from  participation  in  the 'light  of  setting 
-suns,  the  appealing  loveliness  of  flowers,  the  storm  and  pas- 
sion of  heroic  blood  !  I  think  we  should  do  all  we  can  to 
hasten  this  participation. 

Another  voice  that  answers  "  Yes  "  to  our  persistent  ques- 
tion is  the  voice  of  Fame.  "  Those  who  win  me,"  she  says, 
"win  immortality."  There  have  been  times  in  the  world's 
history  when  this  immortality  of  fame  has  been  more  to  men 
than  any  other,  exercising  a  more  powerful  influence  upon 
their  imagination  and  their  hope.  The  literature  of  the 
later  Roman  Republic  and  the  Early  Empire  is  full  of  talk 
of  immortality,  which,  when  you  come  to  examine  it,  proves 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  an  immortality  of  conscious  life, 
but  only  with  the  making  of  a  name  that  shall  go  sounding 
on  for  centuries.  In  the  "  Agricola"  of  Tacitus  one  of  ihe 
>most  excellent  of  those  bequests  made  to  us  by  the  ancient 
world,  we  read :  "  Whatever  we  loved  in  Agricola  survives 
and  will  survive  in  the  hearts  of  men,  in  the  succession  of 
the  ages,  in  the  fame  that  waits  on  noble  deeds.  Over  many 
of  those  who  have  gone  before,  as  over  the  inglorious  and 
ignoble,  the  waves  of  oblivion  will  roll.  Agricola,  made 
known  to  posterity  by  history  and  tradition,  will  live  forever." 
Well,  he  has  lived  so  long, —  for  1700  years, —  thanks  mainly 
to  the  eulogium  of  Tacitus.  The  Jewish  mind  was  not 
superior  (or  inferior)  to  this  idea.  That  a  man's  name 
shall  no  more  be  remembered  is  one  of  the  dreadful  things 
of  the  Old  Testament.  "The  righteous  shall  be  held  in 
-everlasting   remembrance."     "Their   bodies    are    buried    in 


Innnortality.  97 

peace,  but  their  name  liveth  forevermore."  We  are  too  quick 
to  cry  out  shame  upon  this  idea  as  a  motive  power  in  life. 
It  compares  very  favorably  with  the  idea  of  the  Christian 
Heaven  rewarding  with  an  eternity  of  bliss  faith  in  the 
saving  merits  of  the  atoning  sacrifice  of  Christ.  To  bend 
one's  self  to  strenuous  endeavor  in  the  cause  of  truth  or 
righteousness,  to  the  end  that  one's  name  may  be  held  in 
lasting  and  affectionate  remembrance,  is  no  mean  or  paltry 
attitude  of  the  human  spirit.  But  those  who  have  attained 
to  the  immortality  of  fame  have  oftenest  been  those  to  whom 
this  has  not  been  presented  as  a  motive  for  the  conduct  .of 
their  life.  They  have  done  the  great  deed,  lived  the  heroic 
life,  written  the  divine  poem,  painted  the  glorious  picture, 
because  it  seemed  to  them  the  right  and  fit  and  noble  thing 
to  do ;  because,  so  help  them  God,  they  could  no  otherwise. 
If  they  had  known  that  they  could  reach  oblivion  by  no 
shorter  path,  they  would  have  trod  it  without  shrinking  just 
the  same. 

A  thousand  mighty  names  of  statesmen,  warriors,  poets, 
painters,  discoverers  and  inventors  and  reformers,  founders 
and  destroyers  of  religions,  rulers  and  helpers  of  mankind- 
attest  the  high  and  beautiful  reality  of  this  immortality  of 
fame.  And  yet  how  narrow  its  inclusion  in  comparison  with 
all  the  swarming  multitude  of  the  countless  generations  of 
the  world  !  It  is  a  brave  man  who  dares  expect  this  immor 
tality. 

"  What  hope  is  there  for  modern  rhyme 
To  him  who  turns  a  musing  eye 
On  songs  and  deeds  and  lives  that  lie 
Foreshortened  in  the  track  of  time  ?  " 

A  distinguished  writer  attempted  a  few  years  ago  to  make 
out  a  list  of  the  immortal  names  of  literature.  It  was  not  a 
very  long  one,  and  contained  some  names  concerning  which 
it  was  permitted  us  to  doubt.  More  recently  we  have  had 
presented  to  us  a  list  of  thirteen  English  poets  of  unassailed 
renown.     Only  thirteen !     And  yet  the  poets  seem  to  have 


98  Imni07'tality. 

a  stronger  grip  on  the  succeeding  generations  than  any  other 
class,  except  the  founders  of  religions.  The  forgetfulness 
of  the  generations  laughs  to  scorn  the  contemporary  judg- 
ments of  mankind.  The  excellent  Southey  was  as  sure  of 
lasting  fame  as  was  Shakspere  when  he  wrote, 

"  Not  marble  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme.  " 

If  he  had  ever  doubted,  Landor  would  have  braced  his  fail- 
ing heart.  But  Emerson,  writing  of  his  visit  to  Wordsworth, 
says  :  "  He  pestered  me  with  Southey.  Who's  Southey  ?  " 
He  was  a  man  whose  life  was  a  true  poem  and  his  best  title 
to  the  recollection  of  mankind,  So  it  has  been  with  many 
thousands  who  imagined  theirs  to  be  immortal  names.  If  a 
place  in  the  Biographical  Dictionary  were  the  sign  of  fame, 
even  then  how  few  the  famous  ones  would  be  !  How  few  the 
immortals,  if  such  immortality  were  all.  Still,  at  the  best,  it 
is  a  very  real  and  noble  immortality.  We  cannot  tell  how 
much  it  is  to  those  who  strove  for  it  'mid  dust  and  heat,  or 
forgot  themselves  into  its  splendor.  But  it  is  much  to  us. 
It  enlarges  our  companionship.  It  gives  to  us  some  of  our 
rarest  hours. 

"Ever  their  phantoms  arise  before  us, 
Our  loftier  brothers,  but  one  in  blood, 
At  bed  and  table  they  lord  it  o'er  us 

With  looks  of  beauty  and  words  of  good." 

^'  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  "  Another  voice  that  an- 
swers, Yes,  is  that  of  Influence.  It  may  be  easily  mistaken 
for  the  voice  of  Fame.  Sometimes  the  two  are  blended 
into  one.  But,  while  fame  is  for  the  few,  influence  is  for  the 
many.  May  we  not  say,  It  is  for  all  t  "  No  man  liveth  to 
himself,  and  no  man  dieth  to  himself."  With  all  fame  there 
goes  along  a  certain  influence.  The  fame  of  the  warrior 
incites  to  warlike  deeds,  the  fame  of  the  saint  to  things 
saintly.  The  fame  of  the  discoverers  makes  men  Colum- 
buses;  the  fame  of  the  inventors  will  not  let  young  men  sleep. 


Immortality  99 

When  literary  fame  has  kept  alive  the  author's  book,  then 
his  influence  is  greatly,  it  may  be  immeasurably,  enhanced. 
But  in  this  field  there  may  be  world-wide  influence  without 
one  leaf  of  fame.  What  influence  the  Psalms  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, the  Gospels  of  the  New,  have  had  on  human  life  ! 
But  their  authors  have  no  fame.  Can  there  be  fame  with- 
out a  name  ?  And  we  do  not  know  who  wrote  the  Psalms 
(not  in  a  single  instance),  nor  who  wrote  the  Gospels.  But 
the  immortality  of  influence  is  not  alone  for  those  who  have 
written  some  great  thing  or  painted  some  great  picture  or 
carved  a  Venus  of  Melos,  and  scorned  to  blot  or  mar  it  with 
a  name.  It  is  for  millions  who  have  done  no  great  or  fa- 
mous thing.  Fathers  and  mothers  live  before  their  children 
lives  that  are  all  integrity  and  purity  and  blamelessness  and 
gentleness  and  peace.  They  pass  away ;  and  their  children 
remember  all  the  gracious  beauty  of  their  lives,  of  which, 
perhaps,  they  were  too  little  conscious  when  they  might  have 
done  something  to  soothe  and  heal  and  bless  their  aching 
hearts,  and  they  love  to  speak  of  them  to  their  children  in 
serene  and  quiet  hours.  So  they  become  "  the  sweet  pres- 
ence of  a  good  diffused."  The  warning  word  which  fell  un- 
heeded from  their  lips,  in  some  dim  place  of  memory  and 
tears,  attains  to  life  and  power. 

But,  while  for  the  few  the  immortality  of  influence  may 
renew  itself  from  age  to  age,  for  the  many  it  is  only  a  brief 
extension  of  their  mortal  life.  It  is  a  pebble  cast  into  a 
silent  pool.  Fainter  and  fainter  from  the  centre  grow  the 
undulations,  and  then  wholly  fade  away.  It  is  a  torch  that 
goes  from  hand  to  hand.  At  each  exchange  it  shows  a  less- 
ening flame,  and  at  length  it  quite  goes  out. 

As  it  is  easy  to  confound  the  voice  of  Fame  with  that  of 
Influence,  so  it  is  easy  to  confound  the  voice  of  Influence 
with  that  of  Affection,  which  also  answers.  Yes,  to  our 
great  question.  It  is  a  choral  answer  in  which  blend  the 
voices  of  many  little  children  with  those  of  older  folk.  The 
immortality  of  affection,  like  that  of  influence,  is  not  gener- 
ally of  indefinite  continuance.     The  immortality  of  influence 


I  oo  Ini  mortality, 

can  be  indefinitely  prolonged  when  the  influence  is  em- 
bodied in  some  great  book  or  some  just  law,  or  some  great 
discovery  or  invention.  By  the  same  means  the  immortality 
of  affection  can  be  indefinitely  prolonged.  There  are  many 
of  old  time  and  modern  date  "  whom  not  having  seen  we 
love."  Sometimes  the  art  of  the  biographer  helps  us 
mightily  to  this  result,  he  makes  so  real  the  personality  of 
the  man  or  woman  he  presents  to  our  imagination.  The 
quality  of  the  personality  has  much  to  do  with  it.  There 
are  men  of  history  and  literature  whom  we  admire  and 
honor  and  revere,  but  whom  somehow  we  do  not  love. 
Washington  is  one  of  these,  and  Channing  is  another.  But 
we  love  Abraham  Lincoln ;  we  love  Theodore  Parker ;  we 
love  Charles  Lamb ;  and  Thackeray,  oh,  how  much !  and 
Longfellow  aud  Curtis  ;  and  Lydia  Maria  Child.  And  still 
the  real  Valhalla  of  affection  is  mainly  populous  for  each 
individual  with  those  whom  he  has  personally  known  and 
loved.  In  our  Father's  house  are  many  mansions.  We 
have,  each  one  of  us,  a  little  heaven  of  our  own  inhabited 
by  dear  ones  whom  we  have  known  and  loved,  with  whom 
we  love  to  draw  apart  in  our  best  hours,  or  when  we  are 
tired  and  troubled,  and  it  is  good  to  seem  to  feel  their  hands 
upon  our  foreheads  and  to  seem  to  hear  their  well-remem- 
bered tones.  This  heaven  of  affection  is  pre-eminently  the 
children's  heaven.  This  immortality  is  theirs, —  the  chil- 
dren's who  have  gone  away  from  us.  They  have  no  fame. 
Strictly  speaking,  they  have  no  influence.  But  how  the 
well-springs  of  affection  bubble  where  they  touched  the 
earth  !  The  time  they  stayed  with  us  in  their  bright  tab- 
ernacles of  soft  gleaming  flesh  is  no  measure  of  the  after- 
life they  live  in  our  affectionate  remembrance.  In  the  pure 
heaven  of  many  a  fond  mother's  heart  there  lives  some  little 
one  whose  earthly  life  was  only  a  few  months  long.  I  know 
of  one  who  only  for  a  few  short  hours  made  piteous  wail, 
and  then  lapsed  into  silence ;  and  she  to  whom  he  came 
kept  him  in  mind  continually,  saw  what  he  might  have  been 
in  every  young  man's  face,  and  drew  all  young  men  to  her 


IiHDiortality,  i  o  i 

by  this  subtile  charm.  Truly,  this  heaven  of  affection  is 
a  pure  sweet  heaven.  One  day  of  it  is  worth  a  century 
of  fame.  I  would  rather  be  loved  as  millions  of  men  and 
women  and  little  children  have  been  in  this  world  than 
have  the  fame  of  Alexander  or  Napoleon.  This  is  an 
immortality  that  we  can  earn.  We  can  make  sure  of  it  by 
our  fidelities  of  word  and  thought  and  deed,  by  our  tender- 
ness and  our  compassion.  And,  if  we  attain  to  it,  we  shall  be 
companioned  by  the  humblest  and  the  greatest  of  mankind. 
"  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  "  There  comes  another 
Yes,  this  time  as  if  from  far-off  centuries.  What  it  signifies 
is  the  immortality  of  organic  perpetuity.  Its  import  is  that 
to  the  remotest  generations  the  life  which  we  are  living  now 
will  be  a  factor  in  the  great  problem  of  human  destiny.  The 
world  has  never  been  without  some  apprehension  of  this 
truth.  But  it  has  been  reserved  for  modern  science  to 
develop  and  illustrate  it  as  it  has  never  been  developed  or 
illustrated  before.  It  is  not  dependent  for  its  force  wholly 
upon  the  doctrine  of  heredity,  about  which  the  battle  is 
raging  with  uncommon  fierceness  at  the  present  time.  Or- 
ganization is  only  one  factor  in  the  determination  of  char- 
acter. Social  environment  is  another.  If  we  bring  nothing 
with  us,  we  enter  on  a  great  inheritance  the  moment  we 
arrive.  Grant  that  there  is  no  physical  inheritance.  Society 
is  an  organism  as  well  as  the  human  body.  All  that  we  say 
and  do  is  registered  upon  this  social  organism,  and  trans- 
mitted to  an  indefinite  future.  And  so  it  happens  that  we 
are  begotten  of  the  spirit  of  the  great  ones  of  the  past. 
They  live  in  all  the  structure  of  society.  Their  life  is 
ploughed  into  the  world.  I  am  sure  that  there  is  nothing  in 
the  philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte  so  well  worth  taking  home 
to  heart  and  life  as  this  doctrine  of  organic  social  immortality, 
the  after-life  in  us  of  those  who  have  preceded  us,  the  after- 
life we  are  to  live  in  those  who  follow  us.  It  is  a  wonderful 
thought.  It  is  a  thought  full  of  inspiration.  It  inspires  us 
—  it  should  if  it  does  not  —  with  gratitude  and  high  resolve. 
We  are  so  different  and  all  the  world  about  us  is  so  different 


102  Immortality. 

because  of  those  who  have  preceded  us  that  we  are  put  upon 
our  honor  to  live  our  lives  in  such  a  sacred  fashion  that  our 
after-life,  not  only  in  those  who  are  our  physical  inheritors, 
but  in  the  whole  community,  shall  be  something  fine  and 
sweet.  A  thought  like  this  gives  a  pathetic  interest  to  our 
most  ancient  ancestry,  the  men  of  the  old  stone  age,  who 
used  such  chips  as  they  could  find  to  serve  them,  the  men 
of  the  new  stone  age  who  chipped  the  chips  into  more  ser- 
viceable shapes.  We  feel  our  fellowship  with  these.  As 
with  these  crudest  things,  so  with  the  finest.  The  soul  of  the 
first  man  who  blew  upon  a  reed  and  heard  a  sound  that 
made  him  blow  again  lives  now  in  every  organ  that  dissolves 
our  being  in  its  flood  of  harmony, —  ay,  and  the  soul  of  every 
man  who  added  reed  to  reed  until  the  sorrow,  joy,  and  aspira- 
tion of  the  world  had  found  an  instrumental  voice.  Another 
instrument  —  the  violin  —  furnishes  at  once  an  illustration 
and  a  type.  They  say  the  music  of  all  playing  on  it  enters 
into  the  very  substance  of  the  violin,  and  makes  it  full  of 
music,  and  so  the  more  responsive  to  the  master's  hand. 
Society  is  like  an  old  Cremona.  It  has  been  played  upon 
by  countless  generations ;  and  all  the  passion  of  their  sor- 
row and  regret,  their  hope  and  longing,  their  virtue  and 
their  courage,  has  passed  into  it,  till  it  is  full  of  music,  satu- 
rated with  the  melody  and  beauty  of  the  days  that  are  no 
more, —  hence  more  responsive  to  each  new  player's  strong 
and  tender  hand. 

High  heavens  are  these  of  our  imperishable  dust,  of 
fame  which  is  but  for  a  few,  of  influence  and  affection  to 
which  the  humblest  may  aspire,  of  organic  social  perpetuity 
to  which  for  good  or  ill  we  all  of  us  attain.  But  there  is 
higher  yet.  It  is  the  heaven  of  personal  conscious  immortal- 
ity. If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  after  this  glorious 
fashion  ?  If  not,  then  we  will  console  ourselves  as  best  we 
can  with  the  immortalities  that  still  remain  to  us;  but  it  will 
be  only  a  poor  and  miserable  consolation.  If  all  the  voices 
of  science  were  against  it,  we  would  still  go  on  nursing  the 
unconquerable  hope.     But  the  voices  of  science  are  not  all 


Immortality.  103 

against  it.  For  one  thing,  the  total  inability  of  science  to 
translate  the  terms  of  molecular  action  in  the  brain  into 
terms  of  consciousness  make  it  impossible  to  prove  that  both 
"house  and  tenant  go  to  ground,"  that  with  the  destruction 
of  the  organism  there  is  annihilation  of  the  soul.  There  is 
no  positive  help  in  this  suggestion.  It  does  but  clear  the 
ground.  Upon  the  ground  so  cleared  advances  the  doctrine 
of  the  conservation  of  energy,  one  of  the  grandest  scien- 
tific doctrines  of  our  time,  second  to  none  unless  it  be  that 
of  the  origin  of  species  by  means  of  natural  selection  and 
the  survival  of  the  fittest.  This  doctrine  is  that,  as  no  par- 
ticle of  matter  can  ever  be  destroyed,  so  can  no  particle  of 
force.  Now  then,  as  I  have  said  before,  suppose  a  Shakspere, 
tired  pf  the  life  of  the  metropolis,  having  made  a  snug  fort- 
une, which  he  is  pleasantly  conscious  of,  and  a  fame  world- 
wide and  century-enduring,  which  he  is  hardly  conscious  of 
at  all,  goes  back  to  Stratford  with  the  hope  of  living  there 
a  quiet,  comfortable  life,  when  suddenly  some  malady  swoops* 
down  upon  him,  he  dies  at  fifty-two,  and  his  dust  is  stored 
away  under  the  chancel  of  the  noble  church  in  which  he  meant 
to  be  a  decent  worshipper.  His  is  the  immortality  of  fame, 
beyond  a  doubt;  his,  too,  the  immortality  of  influence  wher- 
ever his  deep  words  are  sounded  by  men's  plummet-thought ; 
his,  too,  the  immortality  of  affection,  for  we  have  reason  to 
believe  that  he  was  kind  and  lovable ;  his,  too,  the  immortal- 
ity of  organic  social  perpetuity,  so  deeply  did  he  live  himself 
into  his  own  and  all  succeeding  times.  But  here  is  no  suffi- 
cient conservation  of  the  energy  that  was  vital  in  him  when 
disease  and  death  arrived.  All  this  had  been  provided  for, 
and  still  the  mighty  intellect  remained.  Shall  we  follow  the 
fortunes  of  the  body  with  the  eye  of  our  imagination,  hoping 
to  find  in  what  became  of  that,  in  certain  gases,  certain 
growths  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  a  sufficient  conservation 
of  the  energy  that  could  produce  the  mirth  of  Falstaff,  the 
tenderness  of  Cordelia,  the  fascinating  loveliness  of  Juliet, 
the  graver  charms  of  Portia  and  much  suffering  Desdemona, 
the  doubt  of  Hamlet,  and  the  awful  tragedy  of  Lear?     To 


104  Immortality. 

think  of  such  a  thing  is  to  confute  it  utterl}^  But,  if  the  con- 
servation of  energy  be  indeed  a  law,  if  it  runs  all  the  way 
through  the  world  of  matter  and  of  spirit,  then  somehow  and 
somewhere  the  souls  not  only  of  the  mighty  ones  of  intellect 
and  imagination,  but  of  humbler  folk  whose  names  are  soon 
forgotten  upon  earth,  are  enabled  to  resume  their  conscious 
individual  life.  I  could  as  soon  believe  that  all  the  energy 
in  Shakspere  or  in  Washington  was  conserved  in  the  few 
pounds  of  minerals  and  gases  called  their  "remains  "as  to 
believe  that  all  the  energy  in  any  father  or  mother,  whose 
heart  has  beat  with  pure  affection,  whose  intelligence  and 
will  have  been  devoted  to  all  loving  household  ministries, 
is  conserved  in  that  we  fondly  lay  away  where  grass  may 
grow  above  it  and  over  it  the  birds  may  sing. 

Another  scientific  doctrine  that  advances  to  the  encourage- 
ment of  our  hope  of  personal  continuance  is  that  which  plays 
so  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  system  of  organic  evolution, — 
the  doctrine  of  correlated  growth.  In  the  development  of 
animal  structures  there  goes  along  with  the  development  of 
special  organs,  parts,  and  functions  the  development  of  cer- 
tain others,  adapting  them  to  changed  conditions.  Now,  in 
the  spiritual  life  of  man  there  goes  along  with  the  develop- 
ment of  all  that  is  best  in  his  intelligence,  noblest  in  his  af- 
fections, grandest  and  sweetest  in  his  moral  life,  the  devel- 
opment of  the  hope  of  an  immortal  life.  Here  is  a  cor- 
related growth ;  and,  if  the  hope  that  is  thus  developed  is 
not  a  valid  hope,  if  it  is  not  a  solemn  and  majestic  portent 
of  a  divine  reality  that  we  can  trust  with  calm  assurance, 
then  have  we  a  radical  contradiction  set  in  our  moral  nature, 
and  increasing  there  with  every  higher  thought  and  nobler 
act  and  purer  purpose  of  our  lives.  It  is  not  as  if  we  went 
about  deliberately  to  make  our  hope  more  eager;  but  it  is 
made  more  eager  in  the  natural  order  of  our  lives,  just  in  pro- 
portion as  we  seek  great  ends,  live  for  the  imperishable  things 
of  truth  and  righteousness.  Can  it  be  possible  that  there  is 
such  a  contradiction  at  the  inmost  heart  of  things  that  every 
higher  thought  or  nobler  act  or  purer  purpose  tends  to  im- 


Im  1710  via  lity.  i  o  5 

merse  us  deeper  in  a  terrible  illusion  ?  Are  not  a  thousand 
and  ten  thousand  voices  of  science  blending  to  assert  the 
unity,  the  solidarity,  of  universal  life  ?  Can  there  be  contra- 
diction and  confusion  only  here  where  life  reaches  its  highest 
level,  or  must  there  be  some  pre-established  harmony  between 
our  hope  and  some  sublime  reality?  If  the  almost  invari- 
able concomitant  of  the  noblest  living  is  this  glorious  hope, 
then,  unless  Nature  is  radically  divided  against  herself,  this 
almost  invariable  concomitance  suggests  with  overwhelming 
seriousness  that  the  same  Power  which  organizes  in  us  the 
purest  splendors  of  our  thought  and  love  organizes  in  us  the 
hope  of  an  immortal  life,  in  which  these  splendors  shall  go 
shining  on  forever.  Here  is  an  element  so  positive  in  con- 
firmation of  our  hope  that  it  seems  to  me  to  have  the  force  of 
scientific  demonstration. 

The  correlation  of  growth  is  but  a  single  aspect  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  I  know  by  the  "fittest" 
in  this  proposition  we  are  to  understand  merely  the  fittest, 
i.e.  the  ablest,  to^survive.  But,  if  the  significance  of  the  doc- 
trine of  organic  evolution  resolves  itself  into  this  identical 
proposition,  it  is  a  truism  that  was  hardly  worth  the  patience 
of  Charles  Darwin's  fifty  toilsome  years.  Unless  this  doc- 
trine can  assure  us  in  its  widest  scope  of  the  survival  of 
the  ideally  fittest,  the  fittest  to  carry  on  the  work  of  evo- 
lution to  yet  grander  heights  of  beauty,  use,  and  joy,  its 
intellectual  magnificence  is  the  merest  mockery  of  its  moral 
imbecility.  Then  there  is  more  of  moral  worth  in  one  New 
Testament  sentence,  which  declares,  "The  earnest  expecta- 
tion of  the  creation  longeth  for  the  manifestation  of  the  sons 
of  God,"  than  in  Darwin  and  Spencer  and  all  our  modern 
evolutionists  together.  But  this,  I  take  it,  is  good  evolution. 
The  development  of  free  personality  in  human  life  has  been 
so  far  the  crowning  work  of  evolution,  the  crowning  work  of 
God,  this  side  of  death  ;  and  I  take  it  that  he  did  not  blunder 
into  it,  that  the  creative  purpose  set  this  way  before  the  sing- 
ing of  the  morning  stars.  This  is  no  pulpit  evolutionism  of  the 
transitional  kind.     It  is  the  evolutionism  of  the  most  trained 


io6  Immortality. 

and  eloquent  disciple  of  the  master  of  this  school.  But  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  I  am  perhaps  reminded,  is  the  survival 
of  the  species,  not  the  survival  of  the  individual  after  appar- 
ent death.  True,  very  true.  And,  if  we  could  be  allowed 
the  vision  which  we  once  enjoyed  of  Humanity  upon  the 
earth  advancing  endlessly  to  an  ever  greatening,  never  abso- 
lute perfection,  we  might  be  tempted  to  be  satisfied  with  this. 
But,  when  science  comes  to  tell  us  that  an  incident  of  evolu- 
tion will  be  the  destruction  of  the  earth  and  of  the  solar 
system,  and  finally  the  resolution  of  all  the  starry  heavens 
that  we  see  into  "a  gray,  wide,  lampless,  dim,  unpeopled 
world,"  she  comes  bringing  a  fresh  argument  for  an  im- 
mortal life  of  conscious  personal  continuance.  Only  so  can 
we  have  any  true  survival  of  the  fittest.  Or  does  any  one 
pretend  that  the  fire-mist  into  which  all  things  are  to  be  re- 
solved will  be  fitter  to  survive  than  this  present  glorious  uni- 
verse ?  Then  why  did  not  the  original  fire-mist  of  the  world 
survive,  as  fittest  so  to  do  ?  No  :  I  cannot  believe  that  all 
this  travail  of  the  ages  will  only  bring  to  bir^-h  another  form- 
less universe.  I  must  believe  that  it  has  brought  to  birth 
a  universe  of  souls  whose  continuous  and  exalted  life  will 
justify  the  long  gestation  of  the  world,  and  justify  the  blotting 
out  of  every  star  that  shines  in  the  deep  vault  of  heaven.  I 
cannot  see  why  we  should  stultify  ourselves,  that  we  may 
justify  the  ways  of  God.  White  may  be  black,  sweet  may  be 
sour,  right  may  be  wrong,  to  other  faculties  than  ours.  It  is 
only  by  our  own  that  we  can  judge  ;  and,  judging  by  our  own, 
"without  spirit  immortality,"  as  Le  Conte  has  said,  "the 
cosmos  has  no  meaning.  .  .  .  Without  spirit  immortality  this 
beautiful  cosmos,  which  has  been  developing  into  increas- 
ing beauty  for  so  many  millions  of  years,  when  its  evolution 
has  run  its  course  and  is  over,  would  be  precisely  as  if  it  had 
never  been, —  an  idle  dream,  a  tale  told  by  an  idiot,  signify- 
ing —  nothing." 

But  in  this  general  ordering  of  our  lives  it  is  not  so  much 
by  special  arguments  (of  which  there  are  a  hundred  that  I 
cannot    name)  as  by   the  natural  operation  of  our  intellect 


hn  mo  via  lity.  1 07 

and  our  affection  and  our  moral  sense  that  our  assurance  of 
immortal  life  is  quickened  and  enlarged.  It  is  the  privilege 
of  intellect  to  abolish  death  to  our  imagination  by  its  lofty 
manifestations  and  its  insatiable  hunger  for  the  truth.  We 
demand  a  future  for  the  satisfaction  of  this  hunger,  for  the 
survival  of  these  lofty  manifestations.  It  is  simply  impos- 
sible to  think  the  death  of  genius.  It  may  have  lived  out 
the  full  term  on  earth  :  no  less  we  claim  for  it  another  lease 
beyond.  The  more  companionship  with  intellect,  the  more 
faith.  As  we  hold  reverent  converse  with  great  minds,  our 
own  faith  in  the  great  future  grows  more  strong.  The  more 
we  know,  the  less  we  seem  to  know.  We  crave  a  boundless 
opportunity.  Ages  upon  ages  will  not  appease  our  hunger 
for  the  truth,  once  it  is  fairly  roused.  The  more  we  make 
of  life,  the  more  we  cry  out  for  another  with  spontaneous 
desire.  The  more  we  love,  the  more  immortal  seem  we  to 
ourselves.  The  more  love  we  see  in  other  men  and  women, 
the  more  sure  we  are  that  their  souls  can  never  taste  of 
death.  There  are  some  who  love  so  much  that,  if  we  had 
never  thought  of  immortality  before,  the  thought  would 
spring  under  their  blessed  feet,  that  never  tire  of  going 
upon  love's  errands  to  the  sick  and  sad.  And,  when  affec- 
tion is  most  sorely  tried,  when  graves  open  at  our  feet, 
though  they  be  very  little  graves,  they  are  always  wide 
enough  for  entrance  doors  to  heaven,  always  deep  enough 
for  artesian  wells  that  yield  us  from  unfathomable  depths 
the  waters  of  ineffable  desire. 

But  there  is  an  operation  of  our  souls  that  generates  the 
desire  and  consciousness  of  immortality,  as  does  not  intellect 
or  love.  It  is  in  the  awful  presence  of  the  moral  law  that 
this  desire  and  consciousness  outbloom  like  English  hedge- 
rows in  the  spring.  Denounced  as  selfish,  egotistic,  they 
thrive  upon  self-sacrifice  and  self-denial  as  upon  no  other 
food.  It  is  all  that  is  best  in  us,  all  that  is  purest,  all  that 
is  most  just  and  merciful,  all  that  is  most  loving  and  tender 
and  kind  and  sweet  and  true,  that  pleads  with  God  for  ever- 
lasting life.     Not   for   reward,  not   for   rest,  not   for   mere 


io8  Immortality, 

happiness  do  we  so  plead,  but  only  for  an  opportunity  to  live 
a  life  proportioned  to  the  normal  make  and  stature  of  our 
souls.  We  could  change  "earth"  to  "heaven"  in  Brown- 
ing's "  Easter  Day,"  and  cry, — 

"  Be  all  of  heaven  a  wilderness, 
With  darkness,  hunger,  toil,  distress, 
Only  let  me  go  on,  go  on  !  " 

I  have  read  of  late,  as  I  have  read  a  thousand  times,  that, 
if  there  were  no  future  life,  our  present  life  would  lose  all 
sacredness.  But  no  :  it  would  still  remain  for  us  to  do  the 
right  and  seek  the  true  and  love  the  beautiful.  I  cannot 
accept  the  ruling  which  denies  the  possibility  of  virtue  to 
those  who  are  so  constituted  that  their  faculties  vibrating 
in  unison  have  never  rendered  those  peculiar  tones  which  we 
call  immortality  and  God.  Without  these  beliefs  life  can 
be  intensely  moral,  it  can  be  packed  with  justice  and  benefi- 
cence. But  these  are  not  all,  although  they  are  the  highest 
and  the  best.  Joy  is  one  grand  constituent  of  a  true  life; 
and  though,  without  a  recognized  belief  in  immortality  or 
God,  a  man  may  be  intensely  moral,  may  display  a  heroism 
that  would  be  impossible  if  his  life  were  filled  with  these  be- 
liefs, his  life  without  them  can  never  be  so  rich  and  full,  so 
perfect  in  its  symmetry,  so  free  and  joyous,  as  if  they  were 
his  indefeasible  possession.  Without  them  he  may  have 
such  joy  as  never  fails  to  wait  on  duty  bravely  done ;  but 
only  with  them  is  his  path  bright  with  sunshine,  and  his  life 
a  happy  and  triumphant  song. 

There  are  those  among  us  who  find  themselves  unable  to 
attain  unto  the  glorious  assurance  of  an  immortal  life,  as 
there  are  others  who  for  one  reason  or  another,  or  without 
conscious  reasoning,  have  no  more  doubt  of  it  than  of  their 
existence  here  and  now.  Let  those  who  are  most  confident 
hold  their  high  faith  with  reverent  tenderness,  taking  to  them- 
selves no  credit  for  the  good  which  their  worth  has  not 
bought.  Let  those  who  are  least  confident,  or  assured  ad- 
versely, hold  fast  to  their  sincerity,  witnessing  a  good  con- 


Immortality  109 

fession  of  their  doubt,  as  others  of  their  faith.  If  they  are 
to  meet  at  any  time  with  that  great  Presence  which  has 
gladdened  many  hearts,  it  will  not  be  by  turning  wilfully 
aside  from  their  accustomed  way.  There  may  await  them 
some  divine  surprise.  There  may  yet  be  for  them  some 
gracious  intimation. 

"  Haply  the  River  of  Time,  .  .  . 
As  it  draws  to  the  Ocean,  may  strike 
Peace  to  the  soul  of  the  man  on  its  breast : 
As  the  pale  waste  widens  around  him, — 
As  the  banks  fade  dimmer  away, — 
As  the  stars  come  out,  and  the  night  wind 
Brings  up  the  stream 
Murmurs  and  scents  of  the  Infinite  Sea." 


I 


SEEING  AND  BEING. 


In  a  certain  union  of  contradictories  Hegel  imagined  he 
had  found  the  key  that  would  unlock  the  philosophic  riddle 
of  the  world,  and  his  contention  jumps  with  many  things  in 
our  experience  of  thought  and  life.  I  remember  to  have 
read  a  sermon  a  good  while  ago  that  maintained  the  arith- 
metical thesis,  "Twice  one  is  —  one."  It  was  an  assertion 
of  the  double  unity  of  life,  which  finds  its  largest  illustration 
in  the  unity  of  mind  and  matter  in  the  eternal  substance  of 
the  world.  That  we  see  what  we  are  is  a  thesis  fundamental 
to  idealism,  and  has  many  interesting  and  important  il- 
lustrations on  the  planes  of  moral  and  religious  life.  But, 
however  true  it  is, —  and  that  it  has  in  it  abundant  and  im- 
pressive truth  I  have  no  shadow  of  doubt,  thanks  to  life's 
double  unity, —  the  converse  of  this  proposition  is,  or  con- 
tains, another  phase  of  truth  worthy  of  our  consideration. 
We  are  what  we  see.  It  is  on  this  side  of  the  shield  that  I 
should  like  to  have  you  look  with  me  this  morning  in  the 
main,  but  not  until  we  have  attended  somewhat  to  the  other. 

It  may  be  that  the  other  is  the  more  important.  As  a 
statement  of  our  relations  to  the  physical  universe,  I  should 
say  that  it  could  easily  be  pushed  too  far,  that  it  has  fre- 
quently been  pushed  too  far  by  philosophical  idealists.  It 
has  been  pushed  so  far  that  logically  it  has  left  the  individ- 
ual alone, —  himself  his  world,  his  God,  his  everything, — ' 
all  these  the  Brocken  Spectre  of  himself  upon  the  void. 
But  no  :  for  each  phenomenon  there  is  a  noumenon,  a  back- 
ground of  reality.  It  is  remote  enough,  incomprehensible 
and  inviolable  enough,  to  take  away  all  terror  from  the  bug- 


1 1 2  Seeing  and  Being 

bear  of  materialism  which  has  of  late  so  scared  the  theolo- 
gians, whose  ancient  stock  made  it  a  household  pet.  The 
witty  answer  to  the  question,  "  What  is  matter  ? "  "  Never 
mind,"  has  little  philosophic  truth.  Matter,  as  ordinarily 
apprehended,  is  more  largely  mind  than  it  is  anything  else. 
What  we  are  conscious  of  is  certain  affections  or  conditions 
of  our  minds ;  not  of  the  not-me,  which  determines  these 
affections  and  conditions.  Nature  is  plastic  to  our  sensibility. 
We  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  there  is  anything  in  nat- 
ure resembling  our  sensations.  There  are  non-resembling 
signs  of  certain  vibrations  impinging  on  the  eye  or  ear  or 
nose  or  cuticle.  When  Emerson  says,  "  The  part  our  organ- 
ization pla3's  in  our  sensations  is  too  large,"  he  is  treason- 
able to  his  own  philosophy.  How  can  it  be  too  large  ? 
Why  should  we  care  whether  the  subject  or  the  object  con- 
tributes more  to  the  sensation  ?  Why  should  we  say  that  we 
are  cheated  with  illusion,  if  the  subject — the  organism  — 
contributes  more.  The  joint  result  is  the  reality.  Why 
should  we  deduct  from  the  beauty  of  the  sunset  "  the  round- 
ing, co-ordinating,  pictorial  powers  of  the  eye  "  1 

"  If  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 
Then  beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being," 

by  whatever  art  the  magic  is  produced.  But  it  is  not  "  all 
in  your  eye."  I  doubt  not  that  "  the  rounding,  co-ordinat- 
ing, pictorial  powers  "  of  our  eyes  at  Chesterfield  one  recent 
summer  were  as  good  as  ever ;  and  yet  we  didn't  have  one 
glorious  sunset  the  whole  summer  long,  while  the  next  fol- 
lowing we  had  a  dozen  or  a  score. 

Idealism  goes  too  far,  it  becomes  insane  and  idiotic  when 
it  finds  the  total  order  of  the  world  to  be  only  an  order  of 
our  apprehensions.  Such  a  conclusion  is  the  negation  of  all 
science.  You  will  not  convince  the  Agassizs  and  Darwins, 
the  Newtons  and  the  Herschels,  that  they  have  not  discov- 
ered an  order  in  the  external  world.  This  does  not  come  or 
go  with  human  sensibility  and  understanding.  These  are 
the  mirrors  upon  which  its  beautiful  reflections  fall.     The 


Seeing  and  Being  113 

object  is  the  sleeping  beauty :  the  subject  is  the  fairy  prince 
who  wakes  her  with  a  kiss.  How  beautiful  is  the  awaken- 
ing! But  the  kiss  is  given  in  the  dark.  We  cannot  imagine 
what  nature  would  be  without  our  sensibility.  We  know 
there  would  be  no  beautiful  reflection  of  the  mountain 
in  the  lake,  the  trees  in  the  still  stream.  We  know  that 
there  would  be  no  sound  of  woods  or  waters.  What  would 
there  be  ?  Ah,  that  we  cannot  say !  But  that  we  see  what 
we  are  is  a  proposition  that  has  still  a  world  of  truth  in  it 
when  idealism  has  so  far  relented  from  its  worst  extrava- 
gance as  to  allow  that  there  is  an  objective  order  and  reality 
corresponding  to  the  order  of  the  mind. 

But  this  fascinating  riddle  may  easily  detain  us  over-long. 
There  is  a  practical  idealism  to  which  the  most  stubborn 
opponents  of  the  philosophical  variety  must  heartily  assent. 
However  large  or  small  the  contribution  of  our  physical 
and  mental  organism .  to  our  vision  of  the  world,  the  con- 
tribution of  our  individual  intelligence  and  character  is  im- 
measurably great,  so  great  that  it  is  only  in  a  very  superficial 
and  almost  nominal  sense  that  all  men  can  be  said  to  live  in 
the  same  world,  to  see  the  same  earth  and  skies  and  men 
and  women.  It  is  the  mind,  the  character  behind  the  sensu- 
ous perception,  that  makes  the  world  one  thing  to  one  man 
and  to  another  something  wonderfully  different.  It  was  not 
that  Shakspere's  eyes  and  ears  were  so  different  from  other 
men's  that  the  world  presented  to  him  such  a  solemn  and 
majestical,  such  a  wonderful  and  beautiful  appearance.  To 
what  man  before  Shelley  had  the  skylark  made  such  music 
as  it  made  for  him  !  To  what  man  before  Keats  had  the 
nightingale  made  the  song  he  heard !  Field  mice  and 
daisies  were  not  scarce  in  Scotland  before  Burns's  day,  nor 
water-fowl  and  blue  gentians  in  Western  Massachusetts  be- 
fore Bryant  took  his  thoughtful  walks  abroad.  The  differ- 
ence between  the  poet's  world  and  that  of  any  ordinary  dull- 
ish mortal  is  not  greater  than  that  between  a  Newton.'s,  a 
Lyell's,  or  a  Darwin's  and  theirs  who  have  never  been  in- 
structed in  their  mysteries  of  the  earth  and  sky. 


114  Seeing  and  Being 

"  He  that  doth  look  on  glass, 
On  it  may  rest  his  eye; 
Or,  if  he  chooseth,  through  it  pass, 
And  all  the  heavens  espy." 

It  is  no  matter  of  choice  whether  one  will  have  the  vulgar  or 
the  scientific  vision  of  the  world;  but  the  difference  between 
the  two  is  hardly  less  than  that  between  a  day  of  all-en- 
shrouding mist  and  one  of  all-revealing  clarity.  For  one  it 
is  an  aggregation  of  mere  facts.  For  the  other  it  is  a  har- 
mony of  majestic  laws,  of  beautiful  relations,  of  wonderful 
co-ordinations. 

Not  only  intellectually,  but  also  morally,  we  see  as  we  are. 
The  moral  nature  of  the  individual,  even  his  conduct  for  the 
hour,  is  a  medium  that  affects  his  vision  of  the  world  for 
better  or  for  worse  to  an  incalculable  degree.  The  inward 
disposition  is  more  definite  than  the  outward  fact.  Do  I 
speak  of  things  of  which  you  have  no  knowledge  }  Have 
you  never  found  out  for  yourselves  what  awful  truth  there  is 
in  them  ?  Then  are  you  indeed  most  happy.  But  you  can- 
not all  have  been  so  fortunate.  Some  of  you,  I  know,  have 
sometimes  been  abroad  with  Nature  only  to  miss  her  usual 
charm,  only  to  feel  her  sunlight  searching  out  your  fault,  her 
grass  and  flowers  turning  to  burning  clay  and  cinders  under- 
neath your  aimless  feet,  her  beauty  smiting  you  as  with  a 
mace,  and  all  because  you  have  brought  with  you  a  selfish, 
soiled,  or  unforgiving  heart.  And,  when  you  have  done  your 
best  to  make  amends,  how  quick  has  Nature  been,  like  a  fond 
mother,  who  has  not  willingly  repulsed  her  child,  to  take  you 
back  again  !  If  such  is  the  operation  of  some  baser  mood, 
how  much  more  spoiling  to  our  apprehension  of  the  world 
about  us  is  a  habit  of  ignoble  living  !  "Who  shall  dwell  in 
thy  tabernacle,  and  who  ascend  unto  thy  holy  hill  ?  He 
that  hath  clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart ;  who  hath  not  lifted 
up  his  eyes  unto  vanity,  nor  sworn  deceitfully." 

And  it  is  not  only  in  the  natural  world  that  we  see  as  we 
are.  With  the  human  world  it  is  the  same.  Men  of  base 
motives  find   base  motives   everywhere.     There  is   nothing 


Seeing  and  Being  115 

harder  than  for  the  average  politician  to  imagine  any  one  as 
doing  anything  from  any  other  motive  than  his  own  selfish 
greed  of  place  and  power.  "  They  all  do  it "  is  his  miserable 
excuse.  It  is  not  true  of  God  alone,  it  is  also  true  of  man, 
that  to  the  pure  he  will  show  himself  pure.  But  in  no  prov- 
ince of  men's  thoughts  has  the  principle  I  am  enforcing 
larger  application  than  in  the  theological  and  religious. 

"  The  Ethiop's  God  has  Ethiop's  lips, 
Black  cheeks  and  woolly  hair  ; 
And  the  Grecian's  God  has  a  Grecian  face, 
As  keen-eyed,  cold,  and  fair." 

That  is  the  smallest  part  of  the  whole  story.  The  morality 
of  the  gods  reflects  the  morality  of  men.  The  Hebrew  Jeho- 
vah was  a  very  cruel,  treacherous,  and  immoral  god,  until  the 
Hebrew  people,  having  bettered  their  own  morals  somewhat, 
put  him  upon  his  honor.  The  compassionate  Father  in 
heaven  to  whom  Jesus  lifted  up  his  gentle  heart  in  perfect 
confidence  was  but  the  bright  reflection  of  his  own  compas- 
sion with  all  sorrowing  and  sinful  folk. 

Yes,  we  see  as  we  are.  But,  however  startling  may  be  the 
paradox,  the  converse  of  this  proposition  has  an  important, 
if  not  equal  illustration.  There  is  action  and  reaction.  In 
that  seeking  for  adjustment  which  resumes  the  course  of  bio- 
logical development  from  the  polyp  to  the  hero  and  the  saint 
there  is  mutual  reaction  of  the  organism  and  environment. 
In  the  doctrine  of  evolution  there  is  no  chapter  of  more  ex- 
quisite and  fascinating  beauty  than  that  which  exhibits  the 
matter  of  "protective  resemblance,"  the  approximation  of  in- 
sects and  animals  in  their  forms  and  colors  to  the  forms  and 
colors  of  their  habitual  environment.  What  twig-like  insects 
we  have  seen ;  what  plumage,  as  if  patched  with  leaf  and 
sun ;  what  grasshoppers  and  spiders  on  the  seashore  rocks 
that  seem  to  have  made  their  clothes  or  armor  from  the 
lichens  among  which  they  live !  Here  is  not  only  fact,  but 
parable.  Not  only  insects  and  animals,  but  men  and  women, 
are  what  they  see,  take  on  the  forms  and  colors  of  their  so- 


1 1 6  Seeing  and  Being 

cial  or  political  environment,  tend  to  become  indistinguish- 
able from  their  environment  for  good  or  ill.  Emerson,  who 
was  nothing  if  not  idealist,  in  the  same  breath  with  his  ideal- 
ism of  the  most  radical  type  celebrates  the  influence  of  the 
concrete  world  upon  the  mind.  "  What  is  a  farm,"  he  asks, 
"  but  a  mute  gospel  ?"  "  The  chaff  and  the  wheat,  weeds  and 
plants,  blight,  rain,  insects,  sun, —  it  is  a  sacred  emblem  from 
the  first  furrow  of  spring  to  the  last  stack  which  the  snow  of 
winter  overtakes  in  the  fields.  .  .  .  Nor  can  it  be  doubted 
that  this  moral  sentiment  which  thus  scents  the  air,  grows  in 
the  grain,  and  impregnates  the  waters  of  the  world,  is  caught 
by  man  and  sinks  into  his  soul.  .  .  .  Who  can  guess  how 
much  firmness  the  sea-beaten  rock  has  taught  the  fisherman ; 
how  much  tranquillity  has  come  to  man  from  the  azure  sky, 
over  whose  unspotted  deeps  the  winds  forevermore  drive 
flocks  of  stormy  clouds  and  leave  no  wrinkle  or  stain  ?  " 

The  world  is  full  of  gracious  illustrations  of  this  passage 
of  the  word  of  nature  and  the  environment  into  the  heart  of 
man.  What  is  all  of  Wordsworth's  most  characteristic 
poetry  but  a  variation  of  this  theme, —  the  educative  force  of 
natural  sights  and  sounds  ?  It  is  Nature  speaking  in  his 
voice  who  says  :  — 


"  Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 
Both  law  and  impulse  ;  and  with  me 
The  girl  in  rock  and  plain, 
In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower, 
Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 
To  kindle  or  restrain. 

"  She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  fawn, 
That,  wild  with  glee,  across  the  lawn 
Or  up  the  mountain  springs ; 
And  hers  shall  be  the  breathing  balm. 
And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 
Of  mute  insensate  things. 

"  The  floating  clouds  their  state  shall  lend 
To   her ;  for  her  the  willow  bend ; 


Seeing  and  Being  Wj 

Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 

E'en  in  the  motions  of  the  storm 

Grace  that  shall  mould  the  maiden's  form 

By  silent  sympathy. 

"The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her  ;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 
In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 
Shall  pass  into  her  face." 

How  was  it  that  a  boy  of  seventeen  summers  came  to 
write  "Thanatopsis,"  the  grandest,  the  most  nobly  beautiful 
poem  yet  written  in  America,  and  yet  so  grave,  so  solemn  in 
its  majesty,  that  it  seems  to  have  in  it  no  pulse  of  youth  ?  I 
could  show  you  easily  enough  if  you  should  ever  come  to 
Chesterfield.  The  next  town  is  Cummington,  and  there  upon 
a  steep  hillside,  hard  by  the  road,  there  is  a  simple  granite 
obelisk  which  tells  that  here  once  stood  the  house  in  which 
the  poet  Bryant  was  born.  The  village  graveyard  was  di- 
rectly opposite,  its  narrow  area  crowded  thick  with  grassy 
mounds  and  humble  monuments.  The  boy  was  what  he 
saw.  The  companionship  of  this  silent  congregation  shaped 
his  thought.  One  feels,  when  standing  there,  that  he  is 
present  at  the  birth  of  the  great  poem.  The  woods  and 
waters  that  contributed  their  part  to  his  intellectual  being 
are  not  far  away.  The  environment  of  youth  is  always 
formative  to  a  degree  which  that  of  later  years  can  seldom 
equal  or  surpass.  George  Eliot  says,  "  A  human  life,  I 
think,  should  be  well  rooted  in  some  spot  of  a  native  land, 
where  it  may  get  the  love  of  tender  kinship  for  the  face 
of  the  earth,  for  the  labors  men  go  forth  to,  for  the  sounds 
and  accents  that  haunt  it,  for  whatever  will  give  that 
early  home  a  familiar  unmistakable  difference  amidst  the 
future  widening  of  knowledge."  This  grace  was  granted 
her  in  liberal  measure.  She,  too,  was  what  she  saw.  The 
quiet  beauty  of  the  midland  counties  passed  into  her  soul,  as 
into    Charlotte    Bronte's  passed  the  lonely  wildness  of  the 


1 1 8  Seeing  and  Being 

Yorkshire  moors,  and  into  Tennyson's  the  watery  waste  of 
Lincolnshire,  where  far  across  the  fens  is  heard  the  booming 
of  the  sea.  It  is  not,  this  grace,  for  poets  and  for  novelists 
alone.  When  I  go  back  in  summer  to  the  lovely  fields  close  to 
the  pleasant  shore  where  so  many  of  my  happiest  early  days 
were  spent,  I  know  that  something  of  those  fields  and  of  that 
shore  in  me,  not  wholly  spent  or  spoiled  by  all  the  interven- 
ing years  of  various  toil  and  fret,  makes  answer  to  their 
pleasantness  and  peace. 

We  are  what  we  see,  but  hardly  what  we  see  in  any  casual 
way, —  only  that  which  we  see  habitually,  and  with  the  eyes 
of  fond  companionship  and  faithful  love.  "  We  all,"  said  the 
apostle,  "  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the  Lord,  are 
changed  into  the  same  image  from  glory  to  glory."  And 
what  is  the  glory  of  the  Lord  if  it  be  not  the  glory  of  all 
things  that  are  ?  There  are  none  of  these  that  we  can  look 
upon  with  loving  eyes  without  receiving  from  them  some- 
thing of  their  likeness,  something  of  their  actual  beauty, 
strength,  and  grace.  It  is  so  with  nature,  it  is  so  with  art, 
it  is  so  with  books,  it  is  so  with  men  and  women,  it  is  so 
with  the  discovered  laws  and  harmonies  of  the  physical  and 
moral  world ;  it  is  so  with  "  the  intelligible  forms  of  ancient 
poets,  the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion  "  ;  it  is  so  with  fair 
and  excellent  ideals  of  character  and  life.  We  cannot  look 
upon  these  things,  we  cannot  live  in  daily  conversation  with 
them,  we  cannot  yield  to  them  a  cordial  admiration,  without 
incorporating  in  our  spiritual  substance  the  divinity  that  is  in 
them.  That  was  no  mere  fancy  which  Lowell  put  into  "  The 
Beggar,"  the  most  precious  poem  of  his  early  life,  in  which 
he  prays  the  oak,  the  granite  ledge,  the  lofty  pine,  the  brook, 
the  violet,  for  something  of  their  various  good.  The  love  of 
these  things  is  a  prayer ;  and,  as  we  pray,  the  fashion  of  our 
countenance  is  altered,  yet  more  the  fashion  of  our  hearts. 
What  forest  strength  there  was  in  Bryant's  character;  and 
is  for  generations  in  his  verse.  What  freshness  of  all  grow- 
ing things,  what  bracing  mountain  air,  what  clearness  of  far 
shining  stars,  there  was  in  Emerson,  and  still  abides  for  us 


Seeing  and  Being  119 

in  everything  he  wrote  !  But  what  is  true  of  these  is  true  of 
all.  Not  surelier  does  the  bird,  the  butterfly,  the  tiger 
patched  with  sunshine  and  with  shade,  appropriate  the  form 
and  essence  of  the  things  about  him  than  do  we. 

It  is  so  in  the  natural  order.  It  is  not  less  so  in  the 
human  and  divine.  One  should  not,  I  think,  surround  him- 
self with  pictures  that  he  is  not  willing  to  assimilate,  into 
whose  image  he  is  not  willing  to  be  changed,  either  from 
glory  to  glory  or  from  shame  to  shame.  We  hear  much  of 
art  for  art's  sake,  but  it  is  not  altogether  possible.  They 
reckon  ill  who  think  that  they  can  leave  the  moral  out.  I  am 
no  lover  of  didactic  art.  If  art  gives  us  beauty,  if  it  gives  us 
joy,  it  gives  us  all  we  have  a  right  to  ask.  But,  Hke  the 
kobold  sticking  to  the  household  stuff,  the  moral  goes  along. 
It  is  the  dignity  of  labor  in  the  pictures  of  Jules  Breton  :  it 
is  the  tragedy  of  labor  in  Millet's.  Could  one  live  with 
Rubens's  pictures  and  not  be  coarsened  in  his  nature;  with 
Correggio's  without  becoming  soft  and  sensual ;  with  Michel 
Angelo's  prophets  and  sibyls  without  spiritual  invigoration ; 
with  Raphael's  Madonnas  without  som.e  increment  of  gentle- 
ness and  peace  t 

But  it  is  the  pictures  that  we  have  about  us  all  the  time 
that  lay  on  us  a  plastic  hand.  Let  these  be  chosen  foolishly, 
and  they  may  poison  us  as  with  zymotic  germs.  There  are 
very  popular  pictures  which  must  vulgarize  whoever  looks 
upon  them  without  noble  shame.  There  are  others  which 
do  worse  than  this.  But  there  are  also  pictures  which  are 
full  of  quiet  and  of  freshening,  of  delicacy  and  refinement, 
of  noble  purity,  of  domestic  happiness  and  peace.  We  can- 
not live  with  such  and  love  them,  and  not  consciously  or  un- 
awares have  something  pass  from  them  into  the  substance  of 
our  lives.  When  Emerson  said,  "The  antique  sculpture  is 
as  ethical  as  Marcus  Antoninus,"  he  spoke  simple  truth. 

It  is  with  books  and  reading  as  it  is  with  art.  But  here 
we  have  a  much  more  general  and  more  potent  influence. 
The  world  of  art  is  for  a  few  comparatively,  even  in  the  most 
modest  reproductive  way.     But  books  are  plentiful.     Their 


I20  Seeing  and  Being 

name  is  legion.  They  are  omnipresent.  The  most  favored 
devotees  of  art  are  generally  moulded  by  it  less,  far  less, 
than  by  the  shaping  spirit  of  imagination  that  is  in  the  writers 
and  the  poets.  If  one  must  choose  his  pictures  carefully, 
even  more  carefully  must  he  choose  his  books,  especially  the 
books  that  are  to  be  no  chance  acquaintances,  but  the 
companions  of  his  solitary  hours.  To  be  what  we  see,  what 
we  have  loving  consort  with,  on  this  plane,  what  privilege 
and  blessing  it  may  be,  or  what  curse  and  doom  !  To  have 
in  us  something  of  Thackeray,  his  hatred  of  all  meanness  ; 
something  of  Carlyle,  his  hatred  of  all  shams;  something 
of  Browning's  "joy  in  man's  life,  the  mere  living";  some- 
thing of  Emerson,  his  imperturbable  serenity  ;  something  of 
Shakspere,  his  broad  humanity;  something  of  Homer,  his 
freshness  of  the  morning  world, —  what  possibilities  are 
these !  And  then  there  are  the  books  which  present  to  us 
the  images  of  great  men  and  noble  women.  Those  whom 
we  can  appreciate  and  honor,  reverence  and  love,  in  some 
high  sense  we  are.  Beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of 
Garrison  or  Lincoln  or  Channing  or  Parker,  and  a  hundred 
more,  we  are  changed  into  the  same  image  from  glory  to 
glory. 

If  it  is  so  with  men  and  women  whom  we  only  see  as  in  a 
glass,  reflected  in  the  mirror  of  a  book,  it  is  so,  how  much 
more  evidently,  in  our  habitual  intercourse  with  living  men 
and  women  !  There  are  those  who  are  not  famous  and  will 
never  be,  tiny  folk  compared  with  such  mighty  ones  as  I 
have  named  and  others  of  their  spiritual  height,  who  because 
we  know  them,  have  lived  with  them  and  loved  them,  are 
more  to  us  than  any  great  ones  of  the  world.  Virtue  is  con- 
tinually going  out  of  them  and  strengthening  us,  while  taking 
nothing  from  their  store.  "Whenever  you  come  into  the 
room,"  a  lady  said  to  Emerson,  "  I  think  that  I  will  try  to 
make  human  nature  seem  beautiful  to  you."  Unconsciously, 
and  better  so,  we  make  a  similar  endeavor  for  many  a  friend 
who  never  wrote  a  line  of  poetry  or  literary  prose. 


Seeing  and  Being  121 

"All  things  through  them  take  nobler  form 
And  look  beyond  the  earth, 
The  mill-round  of  our  fate  appears 

A  sun-path  in  their  worth. 
Us,  too,  their  nobleness  has  taught 

To  master  our  despair; 
The  fountains  of  our  hidden  life 
Are  through  their  friendship  fair." 


It  may  be  only  a  pleasing  fiction  that  the  husband  and  the 
wife  grow  into  each  other's  outward  likeness  as  they  live  to- 
gether till  the  years  turn  to  silver  music,  and  then  go  on  if 
haply  they  may  find  a  golden  ending.  It  is  no  fiction  that 
"  in  the  long  years  liker  must  they  grow "  in  attributes  of 
mind  and  heart.  To  live  with  any  sweetness  or  nobility,  and 
love  it  steadfastly  and  long,  and  not  take  it  up  into  our  own 
thought  and  feeling,  love  and  life, —  that  will  be  possible  when 
fire  no  longer  burns  nor  cold  congeals.  For  spiritual  com- 
munication is,  as  much  as  these  relations,  a  part  of  the  eternal 
order  of  the  world. 

We  are  the  ideals  that  we  see.  The  parable  of  the  Great 
Stone  Face  is  as  true  as  any  Jesus  spoke.  The  boy  in  Haw- 
thorne's story  lived  with  it,  loved  it,  longed  for  some  one  to 
come  and  wear  its  likeness;  and  all  the  time  he  was  growing 
into  it.  That  is  the  way  with  every  great  ideal,  lifted  high 
up  above  us  like  the  face  upon  the  mountain  side.  No  mat- 
ter how  the  ideal  may  be  shaped,  whether  from  elements 
which  we  have  found  in  literature  or  such  as  we  have  found 
in  actual  life,  or  brooding  silently  on  our  own  thought,  be- 
holding therein  the  glory  of  the  Lord,  we  are  changed  into 
the  same  image  from  glory  to  glory.  How  far  away  they 
often  seem,  and  how  impossible  attainment  to  their  height ! 
But,  even  as  "The  good  we  long  for,  that  we  are  for  one 
transcendent  minute,"  so  the  good  we  long  for  with  un- 
wearying patience  and  fidelity  that  we  become  in  the  essen- 
tial structure  of  our  souls. 

This  doctrine  has  been  frequently  corrupted  in  the  dreams 
of  social  and  industrial  reform.     The  equivalence  of  seeing 


122  Seeing  and  Being 

and  being  is  insisted  on,  as  if  the  circumstance  were  all  in 
all.  All  that  we  want  for  the  redemption  of  humanity,  these 
appear  to  say,  is  a  wise  social  order.  But  the  social  order 
of  to-day  is  what  humanity  has  made  it  \  and,  if  it  could  be 
made  ideal  to-morrow, —  humanity  remaining  as  it  is, —  it 
would  at  once  proceed  to  gravitate  to  a  lower  plane.  No 
doubt  the  environment  is  efficient  both  for  blessing  and  for 
bane.  But  the  seeing  that  makes  being,  that  determines 
character  and  conduct,  happiness  and  life,  is  the  seeing  of 
those  things  that  men  admire  and  love  and  worship.  These, 
whether  they  be  natural  or  of  men's  device, —  the  excellent 
things  of  art  or  literature  or  life, —  are  the  things  that  really 
make  us  what  we  are.  But,  let  this  doctrine  be  interpreted 
as  largely  as  may  be,  and  still  it  is  but  part,  a  moiety  of  the 
whole.  We  are  what  we  see.  Yes  ;  but  just  as  certainly  we 
see  what  we  are.  And  this,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  is  the  gold 
side  of  the  shield.  This  is  the  side  on  which  our  social 
dreamers  seldom  look.  In  their  economy  the  circumstance 
is  all-important.  Yet,  if  some  great  physician  should  appear 
and  lay  his  finger  on  our  ailing  spot,  it  would  not,  I  im- 
agine, be  our  ill-regulated  social  and  industrial  order:  it 
would  be  our  ill-regulated  individual  character  and  life.  If 
men  should  cease  from  all  dishonesty;  if  they  should  deal 
justly  with  each  other,  and  generously,  too;  if  they  should 
cease  from  wastefulness  and  drunkenness,  I  should  not  be 
surprised  if  our  present  social  and  industrial  order  answered 
pretty  well.  That  some  prominent  features  of  it,  if  men 
were  strictly  just,  would  straightway  vanish,  is  a  persuasion 
from  which  I  am  unable  to  escape. 

There  is  truth  enough  in  either  aspect  of  my  theme  for 
serious  contemplation.  In  life's  double  unity  the  two  are 
brought  into  a  perfect  mutual  sympathy  and  co-operation. 
We  see  what  we  are ;  and,  therefore,  if  we  desire  a  beautiful 
and  satisfying  vision  of  the  world,  it  is  for  us  to  enlarge  and 
elevate  our  being  by  all  the  noble  contacts,  sympathies, 
and  endeavors  of  which  we  can  avail  ourselves  for  this  end 
and  aim.     We  are  what  we  see  ;  and,  therefore,  if  we  desire 


Seeing  and  Being  123 

to  be  something  not  unworthy  the  companionship  of  wise 
and  holy  men,  it  is  for  us,  in  so  far  as  we  may,  to  go  where 
truth  and  beauty  and  goodness  have  their  habitations.  It  is 
for  us  to  bring  an  honest  admiration  to  the  fair  things  of 
nature  and  of  art,  the  nobilities  of  literature  and  life,  the 
splendors  of  ideal  excellence.  Then  something  of  the  im- 
perishable essence  of  these  things  will  become  the  strength 
of  our  heart  and  our  portion  forever.  The  more  we  are,  the 
better  things  shall  we  desire  and  seek  and  find.  The  more 
of  such  we  find,  the  more  and  better  we  shall  be.  By  either 
path  we  cannot  miss  the  way. 


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